To Her Own Devices
by Dierhart
Summary: Following the events of TMIL2, Ryoko sets out on a journey to better understand herself and those around her.
1. Chapter 1

-Disclaimer: I clearly do not own Tenchi Muyo in any of its incarnations. Suing me would be a costly and pointless endeavor as I'm so far in debt it's not even funny.-

Playing in the Tenchi world can get so confusing, so here's how this one plays out. We're omitting Tenchi Universe, and combining the OVA and Tenchi in Tokyo. We're getting rid of how all the characters got together in Tenchi in Tokyo and we're keeping the OVA on that part. All of the movies are fair game. This takes place a few months after the third movie.

Sorry Ayeka lovers, but I am most definitely a T/R fan. However, I don't dislike Ayeka. I think she's a great character and terrific dramatic foil for Ryoko. So, sorry Ayeka haters, but she will be portrayed positively in this and no terrible harm will befall her.

From the rooftop, she watched as Tenchi slowly left the house to work in the fields as the first rays of sunlight began to chase the darkness of the night away. "It's going to be a lovely day," Ryoko whispered as she watched the young man that she loved set off to his work. She smiled bitterly. It seemed the more things changed the more they stayed the same. Despite Sakuya and Haruna, despite Kagato, Dr. Clay, Yugi and Kane, on the surface everything remained the same in the Masaki household - including her feelings for the young man in question.

Often she contemplated if she needed to get out of the house more and meet new people. All of the girls could use a break from the household, and the only three men that they had for company. She would love Tenchi to the end of the world, but it was beginning to look like his love for her would only border on friendship. He respected her and he admired her, and she knew he loved her, but it wasn't the kind of love she longed for.

Ryoko sighed and leaned backwards, coming to rest on her back and staring up at the brightening sky. She hated being so introspective. For as long as she could remember all she had wanted was to have fun, to explore new worlds, to cause trouble and break rules, to live freely and without restriction. Her years as Kagato's puppet and her subsequent seven hundred year incarceration had shown her how desirable freedom was. "Ah, hell," she muttered as her mind once more drifted back to the only reason she was so grounded in this place. That boy had a hold on her and she couldn't fight it.

Her sensitive hearing detected movements inside the house and she knew of only one person other than Tenchi who would be up this early. "Time to go!" she mused as she let her body fall through the roof, then through Tenchi's bedroom, and into the living room of the house. She drifted into the kitchen where the little blue pigtailed girl was bustling around the kitchen with a very sleepy cabbit perched upon her head. Sasami was wearing casual clothes - jean shorts and a white and green striped tank top. She was humming a happy tune while Ryo-Ohki tried to balance perfectly on her head while falling back asleep. Like her owner, the little spaceship was not a morning person - so she was surprised to see her master standing in the doorway. Ryo-Ohki mewled her surprise, her golden eyes widening and staring into Ryoko's own feline eyes of the same shade.

Sasami spun around in surprise, not expecting anyone else to be up this early. "Oh, Ryoko! You scared me!" she admitted, smiling sheepishly.

"Hey, kid," Ryoko greeted her, folding her arms behind her head and walking into the kitchen. She was wearing her black dress with green trim and a red belt around her waist.

"What are you doing up so early?" Sasami asked her curiously, as she turned back to the stove to work on her miso soup. "I didn't hear Tenchi scream this morning...so I assumed you were still sleeping."

Ryoko couldn't suppress a smile at Sasami's gentle ribbing. "I'm only still here to say goodbye to you," Ryoko informed her.

"G-goodbye?" Sasami questioned, turning back to Ryoko, her eyes reflecting her fear.

It warmed Ryoko's heart to see the sincere concern in the young Jurain princess's eyes when it came to her. For so long Ryoko was alone and she hadn't had anyone care about her. Sasami was the first person to ever accept her completely and love her completely for who she was. "Don't worry, kid," Ryoko assured her, bending over so that she was eye level with the little princess, and giving the young girl an eyeful. "I'll be back soon. I've got some soul searching to do and you know this house is too hectic to get any real answers. I'm going to take some time to myself, but I'm not going anywhere. To prove it, I'm leaving Ryo-Ohki in your care - so I can't leave the planet, and I'm keeping my gem on me, so Washu will be able to get in contact with me in case anything happens. I just didn't want you to worry about me and I didn't want you to think that I would leave again without saying goodbye to you – I know I hurt you last time."

"Ryoko..." Sasami expressed in a sad way. She hated how despondent her pirate friend was sometimes. She was not naive to everything that Ryoko had done in her life, nor was she unaware of how much it haunted her. The carefree front that Ryoko showed the world was being shown more and more as a mask lately, and Sasami was worried about the emotional health of her friend.

Ryoko, seeing that her serious tone was distressing her young friend, suddenly stood completely up and forced a nonchalant grin while winking at the young girl and flashing her the victory symbol. "No need for tears, Sasami! You'll see, I'll be back before you know it. Do me a favor and keep an eye on that sister of yours, don't let her get her hands on _my_ Tenchi!"

Sasami laughed, appreciating Ryoko's effort to be jubilant. "Take care, Ryoko! I hope you find the answer's you seek!"

Ryoko nodded, and phased away from the little girl. She reappeared outside of the house and began her walk towards the Masaki shrine in the opposite direction that her love had walked in. She stopped on the stairs of the shrine and sat down for a few moments, remembering the fight that she and Ayeka had that led to Tenchi fleeing from them and ultimately being dragged into Haruna's world. That was one of the questions she needed to have answered. Why did she and Ayeka fight so much and so violently when she knew what it did to Tenchi - how much he hated it? Their time together when they searched for Tenchi had proven that the two girls were capable of getting along, of working side by side day in and day out for the common good, their fighting had almost ceased to exist. Even now, their blowups were minimal. Simply territorial sniping at each other. Neither girl had truly given up on Tenchi, but both were definitely disheartened by his love for Haruna. The small amount of hope for a future with him that still existed in both girls caused them to still bicker with each other, but each girl was having a hard time keeping that hope alive.

Ryoko wasn't even sure what she would do anymore if Tenchi did make a choice. Either way it would completely change the balance of the Masaki home. It was clear that he needed to state his feelings one way or another. Even if his choice was that he didn't want either of them, that he wanted a normal girl that he could settle down and live out his days with - he needed to tell them. Part of her was highly frustrated with the young man's avoidant behavior. She knew he was afraid of hurting them, that he didn't ever want to hurt anyone and that he had never asked to be a beacon for extraterrestrial women who were looking for love. However, she also knew that though he didn't ask for it, it was his lot in life and he had to come to terms with it. Would he though? She was beginning to doubt his ability to express his true feelings on anything, he kept everything so bottled in.

For the last few months, she'd been trying to give him his space, trying to let him find his own place in this world. The time he was away was an eye opener for Ryoko, and while she couldn't give up her light teasing of him, she had given up sleeping in his room and watching him while he slept, she was trying not to grab him so much, and she hadn't watched him in the bathroom for a long time, out of respect for his privacy.

He hadn't said anything to her about it, nor had he really acknowledged her as of late. Tenchi was growing up and he was seemingly lost in another world. His physical body had made the trip back to reality, but Ryoko could tell a large part of him remained trapped with Haruna.

Ryoko frowned and stood up. She continued her trek up the stairs. Logically she knew that she could just phase to her destination, but she didn't want to. She was on a mission and part of being on a mission meant you had to be disciplined and you had to do things the hard way. Most of the residents at the house thought that she was lazy and incapable of patience, but she had spent 700 years physically trapped in the same location, not being able to move a muscle, alone in the dark with her thoughts. If Ryoko possessed anything other than a phenomenal body, it was infinite patience.

That was another issue that she needed to address, she mused as she continued her tiring walk up the stairs. Her behavior in front of the rest of the family. She was lazy, she couldn't deny that. The thought of manual labor seemed very tiring and very beneath her. It was much easier to let everyone else take care of it than to try to do it herself. Still, she knew that she had a tendency to overplay the role of bottom feeder when it came to being a functioning member of the household.

"Kagato did make you into his little servant," she mused to herself as her feet climbed the seemingly never-ending staircase. "It's only natural that you would avoid such activities as cleaning and cooking when such manual labor - slave labor - was forced upon you. You shouldn't demean yourself with that kind of work."

She chuckled at her minds clear effort to protect herself from any seemingly wrongdoing. She knew that she should step up more around the house. Hell, the princesses of Jurai, who had servants at their palace that waited on them hand and foot, didn't find the manual labor that they partook in demeaning.

"They weren't _forced_ to do it," her mind once more reminded her. "This is a vacation to them, a little break from their reality. They don't mind doing it because it's novel, it's something new, and it's not something they'll have to do for the rest of their lives."

A rueful smile crossed her lips as her mind turned to her young friend. How would Sasami hold up when she was eventually back on Jurai and she had someone doing all of the cooking for her? She couldn't imagine how hard it would be for Sasami to hang up her apron and go back to being a pampered princess.

Then there was Ayeka. The first crowned princess of Jurai had waited tables side by side with the most feared space pirate in the galaxy - albeit a reformed feared space pirate. The spoiled girl who had grown up with people bowing and scraping to her had worked customer service, had demeaned herself in a uniform, had apologized and groveled for the patrons of the diners they worked at. She did it all with a smile, all with the same grace and dignity that she cleaned the Masaki house with - and all for the same reason. She did it for the man she loved.

_And where are you off to this early?_ A voice suddenly resounded through Ryoko's head.

A frown crossed the space pirate's features as her mother honed in on her. _I need a little time to think a few things through, Washu._ Ryoko responded.

_What things?_ Was the curious reply.

_Everything._

There was a moment of silence between the two as Washu processed her troubled daughter's answer. _I'm here for you._ Washu finally informed her. Her voice was no longer childish and had taken on the age it did when she was deeply concerned about something.

A small smile played on Ryoko's lips as she considered that. _I know, mom, that's why I kept the gem on me instead of shutting myself off completely. I want you to be able to reach me and see that I'm okay._

A wave of confused emotions overcame Ryoko through the telepathic, and apparently empathic, link she shared with her creator. There had never been any real closeness or tenderness between the two women, but both were well aware that they were connected by more than a psychic bond. Washu was overwhelmed by her daughter's recognition of her not only being her mother, but of her being a person who cared deeply for her despite all of her shortcomings. _I'll keep the others away from you,_ Washu finally stated firmly, not knowing how to respond to her daughter's words, but knowing that her action would show her daughter how much she cared.

_Thanks, mom,_ Ryoko acknowledged the gesture.

The telepathic link shut between them, and Ryoko continued on her walk, a smile still playing upon her lips.

Tenchi entered the house and washed up before breakfast. His mind was only half on the task of cleaning up, the other half was on the odd behavior the girls had been exhibiting since his return from Haruna's world. At first, things had seemed like they were back to normal. His talk with Ryoko in front of the lake had assured him that the girls forgave him for everything that had happened. Over the recent weeks though, he'd found that each of them was a little more withdrawn from him. The six months that he had been gone were a blur to him, a rush of blackness and a dizzying relationship with a girl that was everything he had ever wanted in a partner. To them though, it was six months of endless searching, worrying, and waiting, every day causing hope to fade just a little bit more. He knew things had changed. On the surface everything remained the same, the girls still bickered with one another and the same proclamations were made that he loved one of them more than he loved the others, but he could see that a lot of it was just routine to the girls now. It was what they did in his presence.

Ryoko and Ayeka hadn't been the same towards him or each other really since his return. Ayeka, who had always been reserved with him, was now even more so in some ways, but a lot freer in others. It seemed that she had accepted something and was working to distance herself from him, but at the same time this distance she was trying to create allowed her more freedom to be herself without worrying about being judged for it. Ryoko was another mystery to him. He knew she took his disappearance hard, and she took it even harder when he had chosen to remain with Haruna and help the troubled girl through her problems before he returned to his own world. The space pirate hadn't really been the same since. She'd been gentler with him, she hadn't thrown herself on or at him nearly as much, and she seemed to get along better with all of the other girls.

There had been a time where he wasn't able to go an hour without the cyan haired girl wrapping her arms around him and whispering suggestions in his ear while reaching her hands places that he really wished she wouldn't - at the time.

He couldn't stop a small smirk from crossing his lips as he thought of how Haruna had matured him and made him more capable of handling an aggressive woman like Ryoko. The irony was that now that he was ready and able to deal with her advances, she seemed to pull away from him.

Tenchi's smirk turned into a frown. They were all pulling away from him. Mihoshi and Kiyone were talking about moving into their own apartment again to not impose upon the family anymore, little Sasami was more distant to him, her eyes not reflecting that unconditional love and trust towards him that they once had, little Washu was spending more time in her lab sometimes disappearing for weeks on end…and the mystery remained with Ayeka and Ryoko. He sighed, he wished that things could go back to how they had been. He wished that the girls still trusted him as they had before Haruna stole him away from them.

"Lord Tenchi," came the soft voice of the first princess of Jurai as she knocked upon the bathroom door. "Sasami wants me to let you know that breakfast is ready."

"Thanks, Miss Ayeka!" he responded quickly, shaking himself out of his thoughts and exiting the restroom. He had expected her to be in the hallway waiting for him, so he was surprised to find himself alone. Slightly disappointed, he wandered his way into the dining room. There he noticed two unusual things. The first was that Washu was sitting at the table looking like she was going to eat the meal with them. The other was that Ryoko was nowhere in sight.

He joined Sasami, Mihoshi, Kiyone, Washu and Ayeka at the table. With only half of her normal venom, Ayeka spat, "where is that devil woman at? Doesn't she know it's rude to keep us waiting like this?"

Sasami looked down at her plate, "Ryoko won't be joining us for breakfast today...or any other meal..."

Tenchi looked at the young princess in surprise, "why? Where is she?"

"She's gone, Tenchi," Washu answered seriously, enjoying seeing the horror alight in his brown eyes and the blood drain from his tanned face.

Tenchi's mind went into a spin as he processed those words. She was gone? Where to? Why? He was aware of a roaring in his ears as his heart raced faster with the panic that he was falling into. There was something there on the tip of his mind, a revelation he was about to have, but it wouldn't come. He needed her there though!

Washu let out a cackle as his emotions flashed across his face. "You're too much, Tenchi! Don't worry, she's not gone for good, she just wants to be by herself for a while to work some things out. She's requested that none of us attempt to find her."

"D-don't you know where she's at, Little Washu?" Kiyone asked the obvious question.

Washu glared at the green haired girl, "of course I do! What kind of mother, let alone the universe's greatest scientific-genius and cutest goddess, would I be if I let my only daughter go wandering off into the world without knowing where she was headed for? Just because I know doesn't mean I'm going to intrude upon her though! Now, if I catch any of you attempting to locate my little Ryoko..." she then proceeded to explain in explicit detail the numerous and horrible ways she would torture them if she should find they disturbed Ryoko's concentration.

After about five minutes of her explaining the various ways she could make them wish they were dead, Washu stood up, took her plate and returned to her lab.

Silence fell upon the table as everyone contemplated Washu's threats. One by one, they pushed their meals away from them as the images Washu had conjured killed their appetite. All except for Mihoshi, who took a few bites of her miso soup before moving her big blue eyes around the table thoughtfully and asking if anyone had seen Ryoko.

Ayeka Jurai sighed heavily as she helped her little sister, Sasami, clean up the kitchen from that morning's breakfast. Her mind replayed the look of absolute horror that had crossed Tenchi's face when he thought that Ryoko had left them for good.

She had accepted it months ago, but it was still painful to watch him sort out his feelings and discover his love for the pirate. She had figured it out the first time she and Ryoko had crashed down into Haruna's fantasy world – where she had not-so-gracefully landed upon her posterior while Ryoko smashed the balcony of the apartment Tenchi lived in. Ayeka heard him state Ryoko's name in awe. Once it became clear that he had no memory of them, that one word cleared everything up. Despite all of Haruna's efforts – despite the love Haruna made Tenchi feel for her and the erasure of everything important to him from his memory – the pirate was engrained upon Tenchi's mind and soul.

"You're real?" he had stated in confusion and hope to the demon.

Ayeka didn't really understand it. She was a princess, and Ryoko was a pirate! Why was it that every man she loved chased after the pirate and left her behind? Yosho – she had loved her brother so dearly, she had dreamed of a life with him, and he had left her to chase down_that_ woman. Logically she recognized that he could have come back if he really wanted to, if he had loved her half as much as she loved him, but if it hadn't been for Ryoko, he never would have left to begin with.

Then she met Tenchi. So many people thought that she loved Tenchi because he could replace her Yosho, but that wasn't it. Yes, he was remarkably similar to the brother that she had loved and lost to the withered old man Katsuhito, but that wasn't what drew her to Tenchi. He was kind and gentle, yet brave and spirited. He selflessly took in six alien women when he could have by all rights turned them over to his planets authorities and subjected them all to needless experiments. He opened up his home and his family to these women, and in turn made a new family for all of them. Despite all of the stress they caused him, despite all of her and Ryoko's bantering, he remained as sweet and impassive as ever.

She could envision a life with Tenchi Masaki. She wanted a life with Tenchi Masaki.

Her mind drifted to her dauntless rival. Ryoko had been acting so oddly lately. Ayeka had definitely noticed a change in the pirate's interaction with everyone in the household, herself included. Quieter and less demanding, Ryoko seemed to be pulling away from everyone and further into herself. It worried the princess to see her becoming so withdrawn.

Everyone knew that the two women had buried the hatchet long ago. Their fighting now was more of a pastime then anything else. They enjoyed arguing, and Tenchi was common ground for them to fight over. Ayeka needed Ryoko, and deep down she believed that Ryoko felt the same way. No one else in the house truly understood either of them. Ryoko was the only one that Ayeka could let her hair down with and just be herself. She knew that most people thought that Sasami knew her the best, but Ayeka made herself keep up the ideal princess behavior for her younger sister so that Sasami would have someone to model herself after. Ryoko didn't want or expect courtly behavior from her, and she had no intention of giving it to her. In turn, Ryoko had let down many emotional barriers in front of Ayeka, especially during that time that Tenchi was missing. The pirate had openly cried before the princess, confessed her fears and her desires, and became vulnerable.

Now though, that was gone.

Ryoko would not be herself before anyone anymore. It seemed that she too had accepted Tenchi's choice, but Ayeka suspected that Ryoko misinterpreted Tenchi's decision. She was not unaware of how hurt Ryoko was by his love for Haruna, how hard it had been for the cyan-haired woman to go back for the third time to rescue Tenchi when he had made it so abundantly clear that he wanted nothing to do with either of them. Her love for Tenchi had forced her back, but Ayeka suspected the woman had put a block in her heart where Tenchi was concerned. She didn't doubt that Ryoko still loved him, that she wouldn't still give her own life for him, but she did think that Ryoko decided to keep her feelings to herself from now on, to let the emotions eat away at her until eventually there was nothing left but a shell.

Ayeka got this suspicion because that's what she herself had done. It hurt to look at him, but every day the pain became less. Every day she accepted her role as a friend and confidante a little more. She still loved Tenchi deeply, but she would no longer pursue the boy with the gusto and confidence that she had.

"Miss Ayeka?" his voice cut through her thoughts.

She hadn't realized that she was standing still, staring off into space while she held a dirty plate in her hand, and the sound of his voice caused her to jump and stare at the young man who entered the dining room in surprise.

"Lord Tenchi! You startled me!" she admitted, continuing to gather the dishes at the table.

"I'm very sorry, Miss Ayeka, I didn't mean to!" Tenchi apologized, scratching the back of his head with a sheepish smile upon his face. "I was just wondering if you had any idea where Ryoko went to?"

Despite herself, Ayeka gritted her teeth. She was a well-adjusted princess, but she wasn't _that_ well adjusted that she could handle his love for another woman just yet. Composing herself, Ayeka raised her crimson eyes to Tenchi, "I think it would be best, Lord Tenchi, if we heeded Miss Washu's desires, and left that woman to her own devices. Sasami assures me that Ryoko has every intention of coming back and that she was in good spirits when she left."

Tenchi was oblivious to the pain that he had stirred in the princess with his question on Ryoko, so he kept digging the knife in a little further. "Sasami spoke with her then? Did she say which direction she left in?"

Ayeka's left eye began to twitch as she forced down the emotions within herself. She reminded herself to remain stoic, not to shout out at him that he was a dense and indecisive man who should realize that_she_ was not the woman to talk to about his newfound feelings for Ryoko! "I think it would be best, Lord Tenchi, if we heeded Miss Washu's desires, and left that woman to her own devices," she repeated the phrase as calmly as she could, hoping that it sank in with him, or that the threat of Washu would get him to drop the subject.

He frowned as he realized that Ayeka wouldn't tell him anything even if she knew something. "Oh well, thanks for your help, Miss Ayeka."

Tenchi turned to leave, but froze as Ayeka's voice cut through him. "Lord Tenchi, please do us all a favor and figure out for yourself why the thought of her leaving has you in such a panic."

He turned back to ask the princess what she meant by that comment, but she had already disappeared back into the kitchen with the dirty dishes. Heavily he sighed and left the house to continue his work in the fields. Throughout the day though, Ayeka's last words pounded through his mind, pushing that revelation even closer to the edge of his mind.


	2. A Plan is Formed

-Disclaimer: I clearly do not own Tenchi Muyo in any of its incarnations. Suing me would be a costly and pointless endeavor as I'm so far in debt it's not even funny.-

"Come on out!" Ryoko shouted at the large dead tree with the slash mark through it. It had taken some time wandering through the forest to find the right tree, but looking at it, she had no doubts that he had found the camellia that held _his_ Camellia. Hand on her hip and a confident smirk on her face, Ryoko continued to demand her audience. "I know you're still in there and I know you can hear me, come out already!"

The sounds of the forest were the only response to her overly loud request.

"Oh sure, you'll come out for Tenchi and for Katsuhito, but when a woman comes calling, you go into hiding!" Ryoko grumbled at the tree. "Fine! I've got just as much time as you do and you'll get tired of me long before I get tired of waiting for you."

The reformed pirate sat down cross-legged beneath the tree and allowed herself to fall into a meditation. It took some time to relax as she was unfamiliar with this particular section of wooded area surrounding the Masaki shrine and every instinct in her shouted that she needed to be on guard. Slowly she fell into a deep meditation and allowed her astral form to exit her body. It had been a long time since she'd wandered the astral plain, and it had taken her many years to master her control over the form. She had needed it though. She needed to get some part of her out of that cave that held her body trapped, and now she needed it to get out of the cave that trapped her inside herself.

She stretched her astral body and surveyed the land. Everything always looked different when your soul was looking at it instead of your eyes. She had forgotten how beautiful the day could really be. Every day at the Masaki house waiting for a decision to be voiced either way had taken its toll on Ryoko's

enjoyment with life. Time meant little to her in that she could spend a thousand years sitting in the Masaki house and she could leave after the millennium not appearing a day older than the first time she crossed the threshold. No, she wasn't being drained because of her fear of time and its ravishing affects upon her body. She was being drained because every day she saw the boy grow and age more; he was becoming a man, and one day he would die. His time in this plain of existence was so fleeting and she hated every second of it he wasted it not taking what he wanted – whatever or whoever that was.

Ryoko sighed heavily at this thought, the world seeming a little less beautiful as her turbulent emotions once more crushed down upon her mind. These feelings were so foreign to her: love, compassion, sympathy. Kagato had never allowed her to express any feelings, so she'd always stifled them all down within her, and she had taught herself not to feel for others. Being free now from Kagato had loosened the emotions she'd buried away and she experienced them all in such sharp intensity that sometimes she feared they would rip her apart.

Wary to stray too far from her body, Ryoko turned back to face the tree and observed her body sitting peacefully at the foot of it. The contrast to the peaceful expression on her physical face and the anxiety that her spiritual form was experiencing did not escape her. For a moment, she wondered if her body would ever inhabit a being as peaceful as that expression portrayed.

"What are you doing here?" a voice questioned from the branches of the tree. Ryoko turned her gaze up to search for the woman and her eyes narrowed slightly at the sight of her old nemesis. Even more than Sakuya, this girl had stolen a piece of Tenchi from Ryoko, and it was unforgivable. The brunette that stared down at her appeared to hold no animosity, she just seemed incredibly curious why her peace was being disturbed in this manner.

"We need to talk, Haruna," Ryoko finally spat, levitating her astral body up so that it was eye to eye with the apparition.

Haruna chuckled, "still so brash. You would do well to learn a little tact, Ryoko."

"Says the naked chick sitting in the tree," Ryoko reminded her.

The apparition shrugged, "I wouldn't expect modesty lessons from you. The princess perhaps, but not you."

"I don't care what you wear," Ryoko agreed as she continued to let her astral body float before the girl.

A silence elapsed between them as they warily stared at each other. While Haruna no longer felt the overwhelming desire to possess Tenchi, she still didn't like the woman who had his heart. She had been able to wipe all of Tenchi's memories of his life at the Masaki shrine from his mind, but she couldn't cut out Ryoko's influence, and she still didn't like her because of that. Ryoko recognized that Haruna was no longer a threat, but resented those six months that had been stolen of Tenchi's life.

"So, we need to talk?" Haruna finally broke the silence, hoping that if she got to the point of Ryoko's visit, the loud woman would leave her in peace. She'd been resting quite contently since Yosho restored her memories to her, and had been awoken once more by Ryoko's boisterous demands for a meeting.

Ryoko frowned and nodded, not sure how to phrase what she needed to say. "Why you?" she finally asked firmly after another long pause.

"Why me, what?"

"Why did he fall in love with you? What was it about you that made Tenchi so willing to leave us all behind…leave me behind?"

Haruna deeply considered he question, running her fingers through her long brown hair as she thought. "I think Tenchi opened up to me because I was normal. I can pass for an earthling. I don't have yours or Ayeka's powers. I gave him the ideal college student life. Simple, peaceful, normal. He never really fell for me though, Ryoko. You had it right when you said that all I was doing was keeping him trapped in a world of make-believe. Do you want to know what he said that made me realize that I could never truly have him?"

Swallowing hard, Ryoko gestured for her former enemy to continue.

"He told me that he didn't even remember how he and I met." Haruna laughed softly at this memory. "He can't love someone that he doesn't have a history with. No matter how nice I made his present, with out his past, he would never be happy."

Ryoko considered that, but she couldn't wrap her mind around the fact that she was Tenchi's past. More than any of the girls, she was his history. She had been there for everything that he experienced in life, even after he stopped being able to see her astral form and she couldn't talk to him anymore, Tenchi still came back to the cave and vented his emotions to the woman he didn't realize was listening. "You could have given him a past with you."

Haruna smiled at this thought. "No, I could have given him a story, I could have painted an even more elaborate lie for him to fall into, but his heart held fast to his true history. There were times where my influence over him would waver and I would see my world disappearing around me. That's when I knew that he was trying to find his way back home. I would make him promise to love me always, make him promise that he would never leave me, but deep down I knew that I never really had him."

The cyan-haired pirate sat her astral body down onto the branches of the trees above Haruna and looked down for a moment at her physical body. Haruna had slept with Tenchi. Ryoko was very well aware that they lived together as a couple and she held no hope that they had separate sleeping arrangements. "You've had him in a way that no other woman has."

The gentle brunette blushed at this accusation. "I shouldn't have made him feel for me like he did. I shouldn't have…"

Ryoko held up a hand to stave off the girl's would be apologies and explanations. "No need, Haruna. If he didn't want to be with you, he wouldn't have been with you. I always thought that once Tenchi made a choice that I would accept the consequences – good or bad. He chose you though and I never prepared myself for that. I don't know how to accept that neither Ayeka or myself were good enough for him."

A frown crossed Haruna's features as she heard this type of thinking. She didn't understand how Ryoko didn't know that Tenchi loved her, it was very obvious to her and she had assumed to everyone else as well. "Tenchi used to draw you. It would make me so angry to find your portrait hung up on our walls, or hidden behind my own that I had to sit for hours so he could make right. You though, he knows every line, every detail, even without any memory of you. I demanded that he not draw you, I demanded that he stop thinking about you, but there was nothing that I could do to erase you from his thoughts."

Bitterly, Ryoko chuckled at the information. "So he loves your spirit and my body. No wonder he's so wishy-washy."

"I think you're misunderstanding what I'm trying to say…" Haruna protested softly.

The wheels of thought were already turning in Ryoko's mind. She'd always proclaimed that she would give her life for Tenchi's, that she would do anything to make him happy. It was clear to her that the boy, and the man he was becoming, were not ever going to fall in love with a space pirate and demon who had destroyed so many lives and worlds. Genetics had blessed her with a body that he loved though. Sitting below her as a physical bodiless entity was a woman that he actually cared deeply for, that he had proclaimed his love to and that he still thought about often. Haruna was in every far off gaze Tenchi had, every heavy sigh he emitted. Was Ryoko's life really worth his unhappiness? She didn't think so.

She knew that she could give him his lifetime with the woman he loved in a body that he had no objections to. She could spend another human lifetime detached from her body while he carried out his days with someone else. It amused her that she'd finally found a way to make the inside as peaceful as the face reflected. All she had to do was take herself out of the equation.

"I understand completely what you're trying to say," Ryoko answered after a few more moment's of reflection where she got up the courage to propose her solution. She hated terribly what her broken promise would do to Sasami, but in the least she would be sending the body back. "That's why I'm going to let you have his life, Haruna."

The ghost scanned the golden eyes of the space pirate, looking for some explanation for that statement.

"He loves your spirit and my form, so why not let him have both? Take my body and go be with him. Live his lifetime with him and make him happy. All I've brought him is aggravation, a daily headache that he has to deal with. Everyone would be much happier with you around than with me. Once his life runs its course…" Ryoko paused as she tried to reconcile herself that one day Tenchi would die. "Once his life runs its course we can switch back. I'll take my body back and disappear back to space where I belong."

Haruna wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the suggestion, but the look on her one time rival's face stopped her from doing so. Ryoko was in deadly earnest in her proposition. "What if I don't want to take your body and live with Tenchi Masaki? I've tried that route once before and if I learned anything from it, it was that Tenchi would never be completely happy with me."

"No one's completely happy in life, Haruna. I saw him with you though, I saw how much he cares about you. I've seen the sketches he still makes of you. I've seen him get lost in a memory of you. I don't believe for an instant that you were completely using Tenchi as a substitute for Yosho. I don't believe it anymore than I believe that's what drives Ayeka to be with Tenchi. I think that you've watched him for as long as I have, and I think that your heart is with him as much as mine is."

"If you love him as much as you claim you do, how can you give up on him like this?" Haruna asked her with a razor's edge in her voice. The pirate was definitely annoying her with her inability to see that this wasn't what Tenchi would want at all.

Ryoko shook her head. "I'm not giving up on him, I will always love Tenchi. All I'm doing is recognizing that I have the ability to make him happy as long as I stop being selfish. What is another sixty or seventy years without my body if it means that I am able to make him happy? I would love to be the one that he wanted to wake up next to every day, but I know that I'm not. He's shown his ability to love other women, you and Sakuya – he had no trouble expressing his feelings and acting upon them with you two. He just doesn't know how to tell Ayeka and I that he'll never love us as anything more than friends. Why should I deny him his happiness when he's made it clear how much he loves and admires you?"

Words failed Haruna as she listened to Ryoko's sorely misguided stream of thought. It occurred to the ghost that there was no way words would ever convince Ryoko that she was wrong in her interpretation of Tenchi and his actions regarding her and other women. She didn't want to take the girl up on her offer, but she saw no other way to get these two beings to stop dancing around one another and to finally talk without all of the game playing that ruined every other moment of truth between them.

She stared down at the physical body she was thinking of inhabiting. Astral forms were strange. She didn't know how long Ryoko would be able to sustain her own existence detached from her body, nor did she know how far away the body and the spirit could get before it affected one or the other. Haruna had never done a "possession" before and she was rather unhappy that she was considering doing one now. "There's no guarantees on this, Ryoko."

"I know," was the solemn response.

A long silence lapsed between them again as both young women sat as spirits in a tree, staring down at the one body between them, and wondering which one of them would make the journey back to the Masaki household.

The wind whispered through the branches of he dead camellia tree and birds sang in the background. No further words were spoken though as day turned to night and neither girl budged from their position. Both were silently willing the other to come to their senses and take the body that they both were rejecting out of certainty that they knew which one Tenchi would want in that form.

It wasn't until the first rays of dawn were touching the sky that one of the girls finally slipped down from the tree and entered the form that was still caught in deep meditation. The golden cat eyes opened as the inhabitant of the form faced the new day and the new adventure before her. Stiffly she rose to her feet, working out a few kinks in her limbs from sitting in the same position for so long, before turning to look at her ex-nemesis that still sat as a disembodied spirit in the lifeless tree.

The spirit smiled and bade a wordless farewell to the girl before vanishing from sight. Working out a few more sore spots in the muscles of Ryoko's form, the girl sighed and began the walk back to the Masaki residence, deep in thought over the events of this last day.


	3. Consequences of Actions

Disclaimer: Still don't own the show or any of the characters present. Still have negative amount of money. Suing me would be a pointless endeavor as I have nothing worth taking.

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She had to admit, in retrospect perhaps this wasn't the best plan. Of course, as with many of Ryoko's "plans" little planning was actually involved. She was more one to act upon instinct and deal with the consequences as they arose. Normally, it made life more interesting to live this way. Unfortunately, this time all she was left with as a consequence of her actions was her own thoughts and all the time in the world to dwell upon those pesky little inklings. She was dealing with the results her actions before they even arose in anyone else's mind. It didn't make her happy.

Haruna had left many hours before – left to go live Ryoko's life with Tenchi. At first it had seemed so simple and so right. Tenchi had never really recovered from his trip to Haruna's world, he'd never really gotten over the girl that had taken him from his home and his family, who had given him the perfect relationship and life that he had always secretly wanted, but could never find with any of the other girls in his life. Just like Sakuya.

Ryoko was fully aware that Sakuya was Tenchi's first love and that the strongest appeal she had was how absolutely normal she was. The pirate hated to admit it, but she was terribly jealous of Sakuya's hold on Tenchi, terribly jealous of how upset he was when she was ripped away from him by Yugi. He hadn't acted like that when she disappeared during all of that drama with the mutant. He hadn't sworn to find her, to bring her home back to his side where she belonged. He'd simply shrugged off her disappearance and left it at Ryoko being Ryoko.

She'd smiled at him and let him know that was how their relationship was, and that she didn't hold a grudge. She had tried to be a bigger person after she realized that he could never have the girl back. She wasn't a bigger person then though. Fondly she remembered how she hovered before Tenchi and demanded that he kiss her too, that he love her like he had loved that girl. To this day she wasn't sure what his reaction would have been if her mother hadn't interfered and rescued the boy from Ryoko's persistent demands. She would like to believe that Tenchi would have kissed her, that he would have insisted that she never leave him again and that he would have meant it. In the years that followed, she held onto this belief that he had wanted her that afternoon as much as she wanted him.

Then there was Haruna.

It still haunted her how happy Tenchi looked when he was with the girl. How happy and content he was to have the beautiful brunette on his arm, happy to live a completely normal human life without any alien women in his world…without her in his world. It hurt. It hurt then and it hurt now.

There was no one in the world more important to her than Tenchi Masaki, and it hurt to know that there was a world of people more important to him than her.

Ryoko sighed and settled her astral form in the tree. There was nothing left to do except sit with her thoughts until Haruna returned to trade back her life. Overall this was better than the last time she was shut away from the world. That cave had been a nightmare, a cold, dark, wet nightmare that still haunted her, that still caused her to wake up screaming, begging, pleading to be released from the hell Yosho had condemned her to.

This time she was free in her entrapment. This tree, dead as it was, was still better than that dank hole her body was rotting away in while her essence could do nothing but watch and wait for an opportunity to escape. She had the sun in the sky, the rustle of the leaves of the forest, the chirping of birds and insects. She had a beautiful world to watch pass, instead of the horror of the flesh and meat rotting away from her physical form day after day for centuries.

It had taken the first few hundred years in that cave to accept this as the only solution Yosho could have come up with given the circumstances. They had crash landed on a planet unfamiliar to both of them, and he had to do something with her to stop her from destroying more worlds. Given the alternative of killing her, she was glad that he had chosen to imprison her instead. At the time he did it though, she hadn't understood. She hadn't understood what she had done wrong. She hadn't understood how he was protecting not only the universe, but her as well from the threat she imposed. Under Kagato's control she was a danger to all around her, she was unable to control her bodily actions and she had inflicted countless harms upon so many planets…so much so that she and Ryo-Ohki had been dubbed "the destroyers of planets".

After her acceptance of her punishment, she was finally allowed to feel guilt about what she had done. Being left alone with her thoughts and her memories had allowed Ryoko to dwell upon the acts she had committed and truly feel remorse for what she had done. Memory after memory of worlds and lives dying at her hand had begun to plague her mind. Analytical thought had started to form as she questioned what had given her and Kagato the right to run amok as they did, stealing from and controlling all the people that they met.

In a lot of ways, she had been like Yugi back in those days – powerful and childlike with little understanding of the proper way to behave or the consequences of such improper behavior. Outside of herself and Ryo-Ohki there had been no one that Ryoko had cared about, so there was nothing that compelled her not to cheat, steal, lie, and destroy at her whim. Ryoko had no memories of growing up with Wash and she didn't remember a time that she hadn't been under Kagato's control. She'd always been nothing more than a mindless weapon for him to use against all those who would oppose his supreme power. He'd never raised her, he'd never allowed her to feel the weight of her actions, and he'd never taught her the difference between right and wrong. There had only been his way and the wrong way. Those who stood against his way had to be punished, and it was her job to inflict the punishment.

Guilt is a slow working poison. Over the centuries of imprisonment, it had worked its magic upon her, it had corrupted her mind and reformed her way of thinking. Even now she couldn't close her eyes without seeing the image of a family…a home…a love that she had demolished in her pursuit of Kagato's supreme power and her own perverse pleasure. She hadn't understood at the time what it meant to love, what it meant to have a home, or a family.

Now though, she did. She understood completely what it was to care about others and she knew how devastated she would be if someone came in and destroyed all that was precious to her as she had done to so many other people over the hundreds of years she worked under that arrogant bastard.

"I won't be able to protect them like this," she thought to herself sadly. Haruna had no knowledge of how to use her powers, no knowledge of how to stave off an enemy attack, no knowledge of how to protect Tenchi with her life.

Doubt of her decision once more crept into Ryoko's mind. She would never forgive herself if something happened to any of them because she hadn't been there to help them.

Washu was livid.

She was mad at Tenchi, she was mad at Haruna, but most of all she was mad at her impetuous daughter who had once again made an irrational decision without thinking on the consequences of her actions. It baffled her sometimes how she – the universe's greatest scientific genius – could have such a numbskull for an offspring.

She had made the rest of the family promise to stay out of Ryoko's way, to let the girl work through the thoughts and feelings that she had, to allow the space demon her chance to come to terms with everything that had happened to her in her life. Washu had trusted in Ryoko's common sense enough that she didn't think any serious harm could come from giving Ryoko her own space. Less than a day later had proven to Washu that her daughter should never be left to her own devices when it came to common sense. This was something that she had always known about everyone else in the family – and in the universe – but Washu had believed that since Ryoko was her child she was above doing stupid things to herself.

What was she thinking?

If anyone she knew was likely to self-destruct, it was Ryoko.

Really, Washu had just hoped that her daughter was learning to not want to hurt herself. That she was learning to take the self-defeating thoughts caused by years of abuse and neglect, and learn to focus them on more positive things. It had become clear though that this had been very wishful thinking.

She wasn't sure what Ryoko had hoped to prove by this little stunt. Did she really think that this was the answer to make everyone happy? Surely this wasn't the answer to her own happiness…

Washu paused in her thinking and then smiled, "well, well," she mused to herself. "My little Ryoko has finally learned to think of other's happiness first."

True, Washu still disagreed with the path that Ryoko had chosen to practice this newfound interest in the happiness of others, but she suddenly felt proud of her daughter and almost forgave her for the idiotic action she took to forsake her own life.

"I'm proud of you, Ryoko," she whispered to herself as she glanced at a screen that was reflecting the image of Ryoko's astral form lying in the camellia tree. "This won't last though. This isn't the answer to anyone's happiness, but you might finally have found the way to make the boy come to his senses."

Haruna sighed and fidgeted uncomfortably on the couch. Sasami was sitting before her with a disapproving look upon her face and tears in her large pink eyes. She had never met this sister of Yosho's before, but within seconds of encountering her, Haruna had already learned how horrible it felt to disappoint the youngest Juraian princess.

They were sitting alone in the living room where they'd been since breakfast ended. Sasami had insisted that she wanted to speak to Ryoko, but few words had passed between the two girls since they sat down. "She promised she'd come back," Sasami finally uttered mournfully, looking at the ground.

Haruna cringed at hearing these sad words and quickly scrambled for some way to make this better. "She will. I promise you, I'm not here for good. She came to me though and she was lost. Ryoko thought that this was the way to make everyone happy…to make Tenchi happy."

Sasami sniffled and looked back up at the face she knew, but the spirit that she didn't. She'd known as soon as she saw "Ryoko" that morning that her friend no longer inhabited the body that stood before her. Her mind had been so relieved and elated when she saw Ryoko emerge from the woods less than a full day since she had declared she needed time to think and be by herself. That whole day Ryoko was gone Sasami had done nothing but worry about her health and happiness, but she had consoled herself with Ryoko's promise to return this time, her promise not to disappear without saying goodbye again.

When she saw Ryoko extract herself from the woods, Sasami had immediately jumped off the stool she was standing on in the kitchen while she chopped vegetables, and ran out the door to greet her. She'd gotten within thirty feet of the girl before Tsunami sent a warning to her that the appearance was the same, but the girl was gone. Immediately the young girl had frozen and fixed her eyes upon the figure walking towards her. Disappointment and doubt had crushed down upon the princess. She didn't want to believe that Ryoko was gone, but the more she observed the figure coming up to her, the more she could see that the mannerisms, the posture, the life force that was Ryoko had disappeared and had been replaced with a being she didn't know.

Looking at the section of the woods that Ryoko had emerged from had cleared up any doubt in the blue-haired girls mind. Her friend was gone, and Haruna was here. Tears had welled up in Sasami's eyes, stinging her eyelids and making her blink heavily to clear her vision. She didn't want to clear her vision though. She didn't want to see that her friend had lied to her, that she had broken a promise that Sasami had held dear.

Looking down then with her eyes squeezed shut, Sasami had clenched her fists and fought back the anger and the fear that she felt. Emotion overcame her though, and she had turned and ran back to the house, not ready to face this stranger who had already disrupted their peace once when she stole Tenchi away.

Breakfast had been a quiet affair. Sasami and Haruna both barely looked up from their plates. Washu had emerged from the laboratory only long enough to glare at her daughter and spit out that they needed to talk in private immediately. Mihoshi and Kiyone were out on patrol. Ayeka was busy trying to get some life sparked into Ryoko while at the same time trying to pry into her sister's thoughts to find out why she was so out of sorts. Once it became apparent that neither girl wanted to discuss what was going on with her, Ayeka had contented herself to sit in the silence and wait for the events to unfold. Tenchi had sat there watching the member's of his family and had wondered what new drama was unfolding around them. The only thing that he was certain of was that it definitely involved Ryoko's disappearance the day before.

It was towards the end of that breakfast that Sasami had finally balled her hands up in her lap and raised her eyes to glare at the space pirate who was sitting conspicuously quietly next to Tenchi staring down at the vegetable dish before her as if it were the most interesting thing she had ever seen. "We need to talk after breakfast, _Ryoko_!" Sasami had finally declared forcefully.

Haruna had merely nodded her head and refused to look up and meet the princess' gaze. She was scared to. It was unclear to her how the girl had known so quickly that there was something off about her, but she had. Her entire plan to get in and fix the damage she had caused between Tenchi and Ryoko, and get out before anyone was made the wiser to her presence, had been thwarted within her first minute of reaching the Masaki household. Being greeted by Sasami the way that she had, seeing the girl freeze before her and anguish alight in her face before she cast a glance to where Haruna had come from, and the realization reflecting upon her features as well as the betrayal…she hadn't anticipated how difficult it would be to face that type of scalding disapproval. Then Washu's emergence from the laboratory only long enough to insist in a cold voice that they have a talk had only further unsettled the already discontent apparition.

Now as she sat before Sasami, Haruna wanted nothing more than to convince the young Juraian that everything would return to normal soon. She didn't know how to convince the girl of that though when she herself was uncertain of how to proceed in fixing something she hadn't realized until a day earlier that she broke. It wasn't Tenchi's feelings for Ryoko or Ryoko's feelings for Tenchi that needed to fixed, it was Ryoko's confidence that Tenchi loved her that needed to be repaired. She hadn't realized that her spiriting Tenchi away as she had unsettled the girl so much. Every time she had encountered Ryoko during that time, her rival had always appeared so confident that Tenchi would always love her more. It hadn't even crossed Haruna's mind since then that Ryoko no longer held that belief, that she could no longer proclaim that in the end she would be the one with Tenchi.

"I don't understand why you're here, Haruna," Sasami finally whispered. "Tenchi won't be happy to find out that Ryoko's gone. He…"

"Loves her? I know." Haruna sighed and made an attempt to run her fingers through her hair, only to find that the cyan spikes were nothing like her normally soft auburn tresses. "I thought that once he was back here , he would have realized it, but apparently he hasn't, and apparently it's finally taken its toll upon your friend. She came to me and insisted that Tenchi would be happier with me. I tried fighting her on it, but she was in no frame of mind to listen to reason."

Sasami had to smile at that proclamation despite how upset she was. "Ryoko's very good at not listening to reason."

Haruna chuckled and nodded. "I know, kid, I know. Trust me, I'm going to do what I can to fix this mess, and then I'm going to go back and insist that woman take her life back. I don't want to live this life. Tenchi gave me a wonderful life with him already, I am finally at peace with my death and I don't wish to impart any more grief upon this family."

The princess merely nodded and stood up. "No offense, Haruna, but I want you gone as soon as possible. Ryoko's like a sister to me, and I don't like the thought of her out there alone with nothing but her thoughts. There's too much pain in memories for her to have nothing solid to hold onto."

With that, the little girl turned and left for the kitchen, starting to prepare that days lunch.


	4. Realizations are Made

In the end, it all came down to what he wanted.

Tenchi was very well aware of this truth and he mused over its significance as he worked on harvesting the carrots in the field while the midmorning sun crept higher in the sky and beat down relentlessly upon him. The only real question then that remained was "what did he want?" Or perhaps, more importantly, the question really was, "who did he want?"

For a moment, his mind drifted to Sakuya. He found that as time passed, her loss hurt him less and less, for he knew that in a manner of speaking she did still exist in that cave that Ryoko was once trapped in. She wasn't lost, she was just dormant inside a powerful mutant who was waiting to reemerge until she grew up and could better handle her powers. Sakuya was his first love and losing her had been the hardest thing he had experienced in his life up until that point. He loved how normal she was, how he could go to school and see her sitting in a desk next to him, how she walked home from school with him and shared details of her day, how she let him know she liked him without making any demands of an eternal commitment to each other. The dates that he had gone on with her were so perfectly unexceptional that they stood out as extraordinary in his mind – there had been no drama, no fighting, and no stares from strangers.

It wasn't that way at all with the rest of the girls. The girls in his family all wanted to know who he loved and once he made any such decision about this, he was expected to commit to that person forever. Sakuya had let him learn to love her and he was given the opportunity to get to know her and in tandem get to know himself with her.

Then there was the issue of power. He had never feared Sakuya's anger. He had never been afraid that if he did or said something that she didn't approve of that she would harm him or that if he looked at another woman she would blow up his home.

Ryoko and Ayeka…

Tenchi sighed and heavily swung the head of the hoe into the sand, leaning against the handle as he wiped the sweat from his brow, and glanced at his home. How many times had it been repaired after a debate between those two went a little too far? Memories of all the times he sat on the roof with a stack of wood and a hammer flooded his mind, and he had to shudder.

At the thought of the roof though, a smile crossed his lips. How many times had he and Ryoko sat up there and talked? She was so different around him when the other girls weren't in ear shot. She was so much more open and honest about everything. There hadn't been a time when they were on the roof together that she made an advance on him. She was such a dichotomy – seemingly so carefree, but at the same time more serious than anyone else in the household.

At the thought of the behavioral patterns of Ryoko, he had to swallow hard and look down. She was behaving so differently towards him. He had noticed it before her odd disappearing act where she had requested no one follow her. This morning though upon her return, he could swear she was a completely different person. She'd barely looked at him throughout the entire meal and no matter what Ayeka had said to provoke an argument between them, she had not responded in the expected manner. She seemed distant, nervous and detached, and he had to wonder what put those emotions in the normally vibrant Ryoko.

Sasami had been upset, and Washu's brief appearance from her lab had baffled him. She wore the expression of a woman on the edge on her face when she had snapped to Ryoko that they needed to talk. He had to wonder what Sasami and Washu knew about Ryoko that he didn't. He hated to think that there was something the matter with her, or that she didn't think she could come to him with her problems if something was bothering her. He had always hoped that she knew she could trust him with anything, that no matter how frustrated he got with her sometimes that she was still his best friend and he hoped that he was hers as well.

Steering his thoughts away from Ryoko, Tenchi shook his head and resumed his work in the field. Who did he want?

He hadn't a clue. When he thought about the girls, he couldn't picture his life without any one of them in it with him. He knew there was a difference between having them as his friends and having one of them as his lover though. A vast difference.

His time with Haruna had enlightened him to just how different a lover and a friend were.

Haruna. There was a pain in his heart when he thought of her as well. Not because he was in love with her, but because he hated how her life was stripped from her. He hated how much pain she was in and how desperate her isolation had made her to live the dream that she had always wanted with him.

Uncomfortably, with this thought, his mind once more drifted to Ryoko. She'd been alone for so terribly long within that cave. He couldn't imagine what it was like to spend seven hundred years trapped in one place waiting for the day your prison sentence was revoked and you were free to be yourself once more. He had to wonder what her dreams were while she was in that cave. He had to wonder what her mind had done to pass the time while her body decayed in a freezing pool.

He had forgiven Haruna for her behavior when he learned that she was an unhappy spirit who had been trapped for so long yearning to live once more. Ryoko was just the same. She'd been a bishop in a madman's game of chess – there was no way he could consider someone with her power and skill a pawn. The only way to free her from Kagato's control had been to keep her ensnared in a different type of prison. It was heartbreaking how tragic her life had been before he accidentally released her.

Accident.

He was beginning to wonder how accidental her release was. His grandfather was not a stupid man; he would not have let Tenchi take the keys had he not been aware of the results that would happen. Tenchi had been sure at first that he had been sly enough to steal the keys that imprisoned Ryoko from Katsuhito. In hindsight though, after all of the drama that had happened with all of the girls, he had to wonder if Katsuhito hadn't known of Tenchi's destiny with these women. He wouldn't be surprised if Katsuhito hadn't released her himself and just made Tenchi think he did it.

He'd like to think though that he was completely responsible for it, that he had been the one to save her from her horrible fate.

Again, he had to shake his head and clear the thought of Ryoko from his mind. He'd been thinking of Haruna and her influence over who he now was. He had loved her, but not in the way that she needed. He still loved her, but not in the way some seemed to expect. She was the first woman that he had an adult relationship with. She had taught him what it was like to live a quiet and normal life with a woman – a fiancée. He had planned on marrying her.

It all seemed like such a distant dream now, but there were still times when he could feel her presence. He wished there was a way he could have saved her like he had the other girls. In a way, he felt that he had helped rescue each of them from vastly different problems. Maybe it was a little egotistical, but he knew that he had changed each and every one of them, and each of them had changed him.

Ayeka had spent centuries scouring the universe for her brother – a brother who did not love her in the way that she wished him to. Tenchi had to admit, he still had a hard time wrapping his mind around some of the Juraian customs. He couldn't imagine marrying a blood relative and having offspring with them. He knew that it used to acceptable on Earth as well, but genetics had shown that such a "pure line" was detrimental to the species immune systems – not to mention the birth defects that arose from that type of inbreeding. He supposed that Juraians probably had different genetic structures than Earthlings that allowed for this type of inter-family breeding, but how that was possible since they were both humanoid, he wasn't certain. He had thought to ask Ayeka about it before, but had thought better of that conversation, not wanting to offend the princess with his ignorance and the awkwardness of trying that conversation with her. He'd also entertained the thought of asking Washu, but the thought of asking her anything that had to do with breeding gave him a bloody nose as he could only imagine the ways she'd demonstrate her points on him.

In any case, once Ayeka had crashed down onto the Earth and started living with him, she'd been able to heal from the wounds in her heart Yosho had left. She'd learned to accept that her brother had abdicated the throne and left her in power, and she had learned to let her affections expand to other people. She was not at all the withdrawn princess she had been when she first arrived. She no longer frantically searched for ways to flee the planet, instead she'd found a strength inside to stand up to her father, the most powerful man in the galaxy, when he insisted that she leave at once. Tenchi liked to think that he helped Ayeka with all of that.

Little Sasami was finally getting to lead a normal life thanks to his help. She was still not in school like he thought she should be, but neither was she gallivanting across the universe in the search for a brother she barely remembered. She was finding out what it was like to have a home and a family other than her sister, she was making friends outside of her sister and their guards. Being on Earth, being in the Masaki household, was allowing Sasami to grow up. Tenchi had to smile ruefully at the thought of Sasami. Sometimes she was the most mature person in the household, and he knew that she carried a heavy burden having a goddess inside of her. He was thankful that he was able to give her the chance to grow up in a semi-normal environment and let her enjoy her childhood while she could.

Mihoshi fell from space into his arms and he knew that her life had changed its course because of that. He knew that she was thought of as a screw up and that her supervisor 's had put her in this remote region of the galaxy to neutralize the cataclysmic disasters that seemed to follow her, however Tenchi knew that the girl was struggling to overcome some obstacle in her path. All indications had shown that she was once considered highly competent and that her flightiness was the result of some trauma. Mihoshi was trapped within her own mind. Over the years he had seen vast improvements in her memory and her capabilities. He was reassured that she was learning to come to terms with that which tormented her and she was regaining some of the control she once possessed.

Along for the ride in Mihoshi's struggle was Kiyone. Tenchi had to admit, he pitied the girl sometimes. Her career had been so promising, and then she was saddled with Mihoshi and she saw the bright future she envisioned becoming an increasingly distant and fading dream. Looking at the relationship between those two women, Tenchi doubted if Mihoshi would still be alive if Kiyone didn't have the rest of the Masaki family to lament to. Still, when it came down to it, Tenchi knew that Kiyone would risk her life to save Mihoshi's. It had just taken a lot of time for Kiyone to realize this.

Oh, and then there was Washu. The genius acknowledged Tenchi being the one to save her from Kagato – though Tenchi had to admit that Mihoshi was the one who had unwittingly released the scientist from the crystal that imprisoned her, but he supposed destroying Kagato was what let her exit the parallel world on the ship. Washu who had spent 5,000 years frozen – waiting for the day someone came to release her…

Tenchi paused in his thoughts, and leaned against the hoe once more as a revelation overtook him.

The reoccurring theme, the tie that held all of them together, was freedom. All of the girls were trapped in their own forms of prison before they entered his life and he was given the chance to liberate them. It seemed to be the theme with all of the women that he encountered – Haruna and Sakuya had both been trapped as well, and once they were free they left him.

He shuddered at the thought of the other girls leaving him. It was starting to look like a frightening reality, especially with this development with Ryoko. He had to know why she was withdrawing into herself, or more importantly why she was drying away from him. Making the resolve to seek her out after dinner that night to discuss what was going on with her, Tenchi resumed his work on the fields.

Hours passed as he labored into the early afternoon. The sun floated high in the summer sky and beat relentlessly upon his body. "Tenchi?" a sweet voice interrupted his work.

Quickly he turned and faced Sasami as she stood a few feet away from him with Ryo-ohki in her toddler form beside her. Ryo-Ohki was distracted by a beautiful butterfly dancing gracefully in the air, but she managed a smile in Tenchi's direction as he greeted her and Sasami.

"I brought you your lunch, Tenchi," Sasami stated with a big smile as she handed him the little sack that she had brought with her.

Tenchi was relieved to see Sasami looking is such good spirits; he had been worried that after that morning's meal that she was upset about something. He figured she and Ryoko had worked through whatever difficulty they were having. It made him happy to think that they settled their difference because he really believed that those two had a great relationship built upon mutual admiration. Tenchi knew that Ryoko would never mean to upset Sasami, she appreciated the girl's love too much to want to hurt her.

"I take it you talked with Ryoko and worked out your problem?" Tenchi asked as he sat down on a pile of dirt and took the lunch into his hands. The young Juraian princess' face clouded over at the mention of Ryoko, and Ryo-Ohki stopped her playful pursuit of the butterfly at the mention of her sister's name. She had, of course, known as instantly as Washu had that Ryoko had abandoned her body to the likes of Haruna, and just like Sasami she was very saddened that the pirate hadn't chosen to say goodbye before she made the decision.

Without the gems, Ryo-Ohki could no longer talk with her sister and she felt a great emptiness in her heart where her longtime companion had been. She'd always been able to contact Ryoko when they were both awake, and she was scared of what a future without her sister and mistress would be like. Sasami had tried to reassure her that Ryoko would come back and until then she would take care of her, but as much as Ryo-Ohki adored Sasami it just wasn't the same as having Ryoko with her. Seeing Haruna walking around in her mistress' form had deeply disconcerted the small cabbit.

"No," Sasami finally answered after a long pause where she gathered her emotions together. "I haven't spoken with _Ryoko_ yet." She cast her gaze in the direction of the Masaki shrine and the wooded area behind it. "I should definitely talk with her though."

Tenchi followed her gaze and wondered why the thought of Ryoko would make her look so bitterly towards the woods and the family shrine. "Where is she?" he asked.

Frowning, Sasami returned her pink eyes to the young man before her. "The last I heard, she and Washu were going to have tea with Katsuhito at the shrine," she responded quietly.

Tenchi had a feeling that there was more to the story than she was letting on, but he didn't want to push it. He knew that Sasami's gaze had been more on the woods than the shrine and he knew that the only reason Washu, Katsuhito and Ryoko would have tea together would be to discuss something critical. Washu and Katsuhito getting together for an afternoon discussion he could understand, Ryoko joining them was almost unheard of. "Any idea of what they're discussing?" He asked, suddenly nervous and unsure of why.

Tears filled the young girl's eye and instead of answering, she turned and ran back towards the house, grabbing Ryo-Ohki's hand and pulling her along side of her. Tenchi stood and called after her, but the princess refused to stop for him. Torn between the urge to chase down Sasami and comfort her, and the deeper urge to unravel the mystery with Ryoko that he seemed to be the only one clueless on, Tenchi stood paralyzed with indecision.

The realization that Sasami was getting further away from him and that the conversation that could answer his questions was going on without him while he stood unable to make a decision infuriated the young prince. He hated how his life ran away from him because he never had the courage to state in any definite terms what he wanted.

There it was again, coupled with it's sister question of whom he wanted.

Gathering his thoughts and his strength, he looked toward the shrine and started to sprint towards it, flying up the stairs two at a time when he reached them. Sasami would be there in the afternoon, but he knew that this conversation was important, that it held the key to a question he'd never had the guts to answer. He could face any villain in the galaxy and hold his own, but it was his own self that crippled him in fear.

He was out of breath by the time he got to the shrine and he struggled to contain his gasps for air as he crept along the side of the shrine to the sliding door. Silently he moved into a crouch and listened through a crack in the door to the conversation that was underway.

"I still don't understand what you were thinking!" Washu berated the girl she spoke to.

"I was thinking that I didn't have a choice," Ryoko replied simply. Tenchi moved to a better position so he could peer through the crack and observe the people in the room better. Katsuhito was sitting on the floor at the head of the small table, and Washu and Ryoko sat opposite of each other, each sipping tea from a small white cup.

Katsuhito frowned, "you knew better, she's a very fragile girl."

"She only did it because she's in love with Tenchi!" Washu accused Ryoko.

Tenchi expected Ryoko to shrug and accept that – whatever else she had done in her life, Ryoko had never been shy about or apologized for loving Tenchi. "I don't want Tenchi," the pirate answered quietly, the sound reaching Tenchi's stunned ears. For a moment he thought he might not have heard her correctly, or rather he wished that he hadn't.

"Then why'd you do it," Washu challenged the girl once more.

Ryoko's face set into a frown and her brow furrowed, "she needed to be taught a lesson. She wouldn't listen to me, so I decided to show her myself. It had nothing to do with any lingering emotions I have for Tenchi or any urge or hope to win his heart. After that whole abduction into a parallel world thing, I realized that there was only one man I ever loved, and Tenchi wasn't him."

Unsure of himself or what he just heard, Tenchi backed away from the door and moved into a standing position. His legs almost buckled under him as his body shook from the words he'd just heard. His heart was racing loudly in his chest, a dull roar within his ears as the blood furiously pumped through his veins as his mind tried to wrap around the confession. Whatever she had done it wasn't because she loved him, because she didn't love him. She'd never loved him.

His mind could barely process the thought. It hadn't occurred to him in a long time that Ryoko's actions towards him might be false – he'd always thought that she'd actually cared, but it was a lie. He felt sick, and he didn't know how to explain that reaction within him. Why should he care whether she was in love with him or not? He'd never claimed to be in love with her, he'd never let her think he was in love with her, because he wasn't…right?

Unable to handle the now muffled discussion going on in the room beside him, Tenchi turned and fled up a familiar flight of stairs that led to the woods. Briefly he remembered running up these stairs into the heavy trees to escape from a fight between Ayeka and Ryoko. Now he was running to escape two realities he dared not face.

She didn't love him, and he was in love with her.


	5. A History of Sacrifices

The day had pretty much been spent in quiet meditation. There was much to do now that she was left alone with her thoughts. At first, she had been frightened by the idea of spending so much time alone, so much time without any distraction from all that haunted her. It hadn't occurred to her how long a lifetime could be when she had forced Haruna to take over her life. She understood that she had lived much longer than a lifetime in isolation from the world, but that time hadn't frightened her like this. Before, she had her anger at Yosho and her relief about being away from Kagato to back her and give her the support she needed. Now though, her isolation was entirely self-inflicted and she couldn't blame anyone but herself for the thoughts and the feelings rushing through her.

How had she gotten here?

At one point in her life, she had been the mighty space pirate Ryoko! Worlds trembled at the sound of her name, and at the sound of Ryo-Ohki's battle cry. When had they lost all that? Logically, she knew that the seven-hundred year sabbatical within a cave had been a large part of her losing that reputation – and the desire for that reputation. Still, she never would have thought she'd wind up here. Not in this tree and trying not to love a human boy, and definitely not trying to make a noble sacrifice that she was certain no one except herself would understand.

Her mind drifted to the people that she knew would automatically know that she and Haruna had switched places. Sasami would no doubt have been warned by Tsunami that there was something wrong, and it tore Ryoko's heart that the girl would have to go through that pain. Washu would know as soon as she tried to open a psychic link with her daughter and was unable to, as would Ryo-Ohki. She was fairly certain that Katsuhito would know as soon as the swap took place, or at the least as soon as he saw Haruna. She had to admit, Yosho had definitely learned a lot and changed a lot in his years on the Earth.

The thought was laughable to her because she knew that her sojourn here had the same effect. It had to have. There was no other explanation for her strange behavior than the power of the Earth…unless…

Try as she might, Ryoko could not turn her heart off to the power of Tenchi. It was taking everything in her not to let her mind wander to the thought of Tenchi with Haruna right now. It didn't matter that it was Ryoko's body – she didn't like that Haruna's soul was with Tenchi's when she really felt with everything in her that she and Tenchi belonged together. Tenchi had made it clear to her that he didn't feel that way though. He had made it clear that he loved her, but the majority of the time she drove him crazy and he had no inclination to spend his life with her.

It didn't make this sacrifice any easier. Giving him to someone else was hard. Her heart had a swelling of admiration for Ayeka who had pretty much seceded from the race for Tenchi's heart. She knew that her one time enemy would never admit that that's what she had done, but there was an unspoken agreement that it was the way it had to be. Ryoko knew that she had to have as much strength and let him go. If he didn't want them as anything more than friends, then it wasn't fair of them to keep fighting over him and making him feel uncomfortable because he couldn't reciprocate the emotions that they each so desperately hoped that he would.

With a deep sigh, she stretched her astral form more out of habit than out of any need to move her figure. Her body was now no more than a phantom pain. She'd experienced this before, but this was the longest time that she had ever spent away from it. It occurred to her that she didn't know if she could sustain this projection for as long as she wanted to, and she had no idea what would happen when her control over the astral body was lost.

Deciding not to dwell on that and worry about it if and when it arose, Ryoko decided to settle in for another meditative session.

Her peace was shattered though by the ruckus of someone crashing through the woods and the sound of gasping. Curious, she looked down to the base of the tree where the young man of her affections now stood glaring up at her. Tears were in his eyes and his chest was rising and falling from his crazed exertion through the woods. Ryoko was surprised as he shouted up at her, "I hate you!"

Swinging into a seated position, she looked down at the boy wondering if he knew about the switch, wondering if it was her that he was screaming that proclamation at, and more importantly wondering if he could see her astral form – something he hadn't been able to do since he was very young. "You stole everything from me!" he let out the accusation before he collapsed to the base of the tree.

The girl's heart broke as she watched the man she loved break down before her. Making a decision, she drifted down to the ground and sat down next to him. "Tenchi," she whispered as she lightly touched his face.

He shivered, but made no indication that he knew she was near. Realizing that he couldn't see her, feel her, or hear her, Ryoko frowned. It hurt to see how her decision had separated her ability to reach out to him. She hadn't thought that she would ever see him again, she figured Haruna wouldn't be so cruel as to let him out here where his image could haunt the spirit that was sacrificing her very soul for his happiness.

"She doesn't love me," Tenchi whispered so faintly that Ryoko almost didn't hear it. "All this time she's been lying, and it's all because of what you did."

Ryoko frowned and tried to take the boys face in her hands, but found out that her hands only passed through him, causing him to groan from the pain of their passing essences. "Who, Tenchi? Who doesn't love you?"

He ignored the question, and only continued to sit on the ground staring off into nothingness for a long time. She sighed in frustration and hit the tree with her fist at this inability to communicate with him. Despite the fact that she was trying not to love him, Tenchi was the first person that Ryoko had ever cared about besides Ryo-Ohki. He was the first person that ever made her want to be better than she was, who made her think that she was worth more, and that she deserved more than that which she had been handed.

"Why, Ryoko?" he asked the wind, not realizing that the girl who had broken his heart was sitting beside him.

Her eyes narrowed as she realized that Haruna must have done something to him, she must have hurt him somehow and that's why he came running to this tree. Not needing to hear anything else, she gently wrapped her arms around the boy, merely letting her body float around his, knowing that any pressure she applied would only have her pass through him and hurt him. They'd been this way before and she found this reminder of their early lives together refreshing. She'd comforted him before and she found that she still had the instinct to do it.

After a few minutes of them sitting there like that, him only faintly aware that he wasn't alone, Tenchi let out a long sigh. "I don't understand. She said that there's only one man she ever loved and it isn't me. She said that my time with you, Haruna, made her realize she didn't ever love me. I never thought Ryoko would say that."

The girl who sat invisible and silent beside him froze from this recap of what brought him running into the woods recklessly. Her first reaction was to curse Haruna out for telling Tenchi that she never loved him, but then the implication of his words caught up to her. Haruna in Ryoko's form let him know that she never loved him, Tenchi thought that Haruna was Ryoko, therefore he thought that Ryoko didn't love him. Why was he so upset then? It didn't make any sense to her that the thought of the Demon Space Pirate not loving him was enough to send him running into the forest to disappear. Unless…

No. She couldn't allow herself to think that way. There was no sense in letting herself hope that he could feel something more than friendship for her. They were friends and nothing more, it was what he wanted, it's why she gave up her body and her life!

"I love you, Tenchi," she whispered in his ear, resting her head upon his shoulder. She was scared for him, scared of what Haruna had done to him. It had been her intention to spend the remainder of his life in the tree, but now she found she wanted to travel back to the Masaki house and speak with the ghost that was ruining all of her plans. Haruna knew that she was sent there to live with Tenchi, not to break his heart within a day of arriving. Ryoko found herself livid with the brunette that would agree to this plan and then renege upon it as soon as she was given a chance.

Yosho. The only man that Haruna had loved was Yosho, and she was using Ryoko's body to live her life with Katsuhito! There was no way that Ryoko would allow this, and she was surprised that Katsuhito would agree to this when he was always talking about doing the right thing, sacrificing for the greater good. Tenchi was the one and only greater good that Ryoko would sacrifice for.

There would be time to think about this though. There would be time because right now, Tenchi was hurting and all that she wanted to do was comfort him and let him know that she loved him, even if he couldn't feel or hear her confessions.

Above and beyond anything else, Ayeka was confused.

Her sister was miserable as was the cabbit that had hissed at its mistress upon seeing her earlier in the morning and promptly ran to Sasami, and hadn't left the girl since.

Washu, Ryoko, and Katsuhito had all gone to the shrine to "work out a few things" that afternoon and had been gone for hours. When she thought of those three getting together and discussing anything it had to be something cataclysmic, but she had a feeling that there was no impending danger from any new enemies, but rather a danger from the inside. Ryoko's odd behavior during breakfast kept replaying through the princess's mind. It was evident that something was deeply wrong with the pirate, but Ayeka didn't have a clue as to what it could be.

Tenchi hadn't come home yet. He had gone to the fields immediately after breakfast, and though dinner had now passed – a silent affair of her, Sasami, Mihoshi, and Kiyone – he had yet to return.

Sasami had traveled out to the fields to look for him and then went to the shrine to see if he was there, but Katsuhito had informed her that he hadn't shown up for his practice that day. The old man had also let her know that he wasn't worried about the boy, he had a feeling there was something on his mind that he needed to think about. Sasami had informed her sister of this. The youngest princess was deeply unsettled by the thought of Tenchi disappearing to contemplate anything – the last time someone she loved did that they came back as a complete stranger to her!

Mihoshi and Kiyone seemed as baffled by the state of the house that as Ayeka was. They'd come in rather lively discussing the criminals they had chased around that afternoon, and about the apartment they had looked at earlier, but upon the despondent reaction from Sasami and the distant reaction from the contemplative Ayeka, they had quickly settled in to their dinner and did not speak again. It was more that Kiyone decided that they not speak again, and every time Mihoshi tried to break the silence that descended upon the table, she received a pinch on the leg under the table by her partner.

Washu and Ryoko came home several hours after dinner had ended, Washu looking bitter but in slightly better spirits than she had been when they left, and Ryoko looking resigned and even more sour than normal. Tenchi was the last to arrive, and had only said a quick good night to everyone before he bolted up the stairs to go to bed. His glance had lingered upon Ryoko, a look that didn't go unnoticed by the elder princess – it was a look of pain and understanding. Ayeka looked at Ryoko expectantly, waiting for the girl who had spent the entire day away from Tenchi to chase after him and insist that he spend time with her, but Ryoko merely sighed and looked up at the rafters.

Ayeka thought that she was looking in the direction of Tenchi's room, but really Haruna was just trying to figure out how she was supposed to get up there and go to sleep. The angry mother of the form she inhabited had informed her with some not so subtle glee that her daughter enjoyed sleeping on the beam in the living room and that her behavior would be awfully suspicious if she didn't follow through with that.

Haruna didn't see what the big secret was. Over half of the house hold already knew that she and Ryoko had swapped places and she didn't see what the harm was in letting everyone else know about Ryoko's hair-brained scheme to give Tenchi the life that he wanted. She wished that Ryoko would realize that Tenchi loved her, but she knew that it would take quite some convincing to help the girl over the mental hurdle that blocked that realization from forming.

Her eyes narrowed at the beam and she tried to picture herself on it, tried to phase her body to that location.

Washu, who had decided to spend the rest of the evening with the family instead of in her lab, laughed as she saw the girl trying to figure out Ryoko's powers. "What's wrong, Little Ryoko? You look like you have gas!"

Ayeka laughed into her hand and expected a blow up from her friend at her mother's ribbing, but Ryoko merely sighed and crossed her arms. "I think I'm going to sleep on the couch tonight," was all that she replied.

Sasami, despite how miserable she felt, had to laugh delightedly when she realized Haruna's inability to put herself on the beam. She didn't wish the girl any harm, but she wanted her friend back and she liked anything that let Haruna know how much she didn't belong in this world with them.

"Don't you think you'd be more comfortable on the beam, Ryoko? I know how much you enjoy it," Washu continued to ridicule the girl.

"Leave her be, mom," Ryoko stated as she entered the room through the wall and stood beside her mother.

Washu cast a glance to her side, only semi-surprised to see her daughter's astral body beside her. Subtly she cast a glance around the room to see if anyone else was aware of the spirits appearance. No one beside Sasami seemed to notice the girl. Sasami's face had lit up, but then quickly settled into a scowl as she remembered that she was mad at the pirate.

"No," Haruna was saying as an answer to Washu's question. "I think tonight I want to sleep on the couch."

"Well, as long as you keep your decrepit body out of Lord Tenchi's room, we'll all be happy!" Ayeka spat good naturedly, more out of habit than any real dislike of the girl.

When Ryoko failed to respond, Ayeka frowned deeply. She was really starting to worry about the space demon and it wasn't a feeling that she particularly enjoyed. She had once commended Ryoko upon her strength, upon her ability to face any crisis that they happened upon with a fearless demeanor and a confident attitude. The girl that was sitting on the couch looked miserable and half-broken. It was almost like looking at a shell of Ryoko and she feared what had happened to the spirit.

"Washu, can you get Kiyone, Mihoshi, and Ayeka to go to bed?" Ryoko requested of her mother, her eyes focused on Sasami who was still glaring quite sourly at her. She was not used to seeing anything but happiness on her young friend's face and she hated that it was because of her that expression was there.

Washu shrugged, "hey guys, do you think you can go to bed so I can speak to Ryoko and Sasami alone for a little while. These two crazy kids need to talk and I need to mediate."

Tired of the uncomfortable vibe in the entire house and relieved to be excused from it, Kiyone and Mihoshi stood up, gave their good nights, and followed Tenchi's lead up the stairs. Ayeka was slower to action. Part of her was very concerned about what this discussion was about, but more importantly she was uncertain if she wanted to leave Sasami alone with these two given the odd behavior everyone was exhibiting. After a quick nod from her sister assuring her that she would be okay if she left, Ayeka bowed and exited the room as well.

"Well, well," Washu mused once she was certain everyone was gone. "The prodigal daughter returns. What brings you here, Little Ryoko?"

"Tenchi," was Ryoko's response.

"Oh, I thought you gave Tenchi up," Washu answered, alerting Haruna to her body's owners presence.

Ryoko frowned and looked over at Haruna, "something she said had Tenchi running into the woods with the crazy notion that I don't love him with every fiber of my being. I have to know what she said to him."

"As far as I'm aware, Haruna didn't spend any time with Tenchi today. Katsuhito and I spoke with her all day about this crazy little plan that you two cooked up. Though as she tells it, it's mostly your idea, not hers. What were you thinking, Ryoko? Don't you realize what you're doing to this family?"

"The only person I feel badly about hurting is Sasami. She's the only one who should be affected by my decision because she's the only person here who cares about me. I'm sorry, Sasami. I know you must be angry with me and you have every right to be, but I really feel that this is the best thing in the world for Tenchi, that he'll be happier this way, and that's the most important thing in the world to me."

Sasami nodded, "I know that you love him, Ryoko. I just wish you hadn't told me you were coming back if you had planned on giving Haruna your life! It was so horrible to run and see you, only to discover a stranger in your place. Ryo-Ohki's been miserable all day, you didn't even say goodbye to her."

"It wasn't my intention when I first left to switch lives with Haruna," Ryoko protested, kneeling down before the girl. "I really just wanted some time to think, but then I realized that Haruna has always made Tenchi happy. You never saw them together, you never saw how he smiled when she was around. Even more than Sakuya, she makes him happy. If I can give him what his heart wants, why should I be selfish and withhold it from him?"

Washu was going to interject, but Sasami beat her to the punch. "If Haruna makes him so happy, if he loves her so much, why was the thought of you not loving him enough to send him runnin? Why was he so dejected when he came home – so much so that he wouldn't even eat? I know you can't believe this Ryoko, but Tenchi is in love with _you_ not Haruna. Everyone knows it except for you two!"

Ryoko's heart involuntarily fluttered at the thought of Tenchi wanting to be with her, but she quickly stifled it. "Tenchi only thinks that he cares about me. She's enough to make all thoughts of me disappear, she's done it before. Once they spend time together, he'll remember everything he loves about her and all thoughts of me will be gone. I just don't like her telling him that I've never loved him. I don't want him thinking that the life that we had together meant nothing."

"So you don't mind if she tells him her identity?" Washu asked, a plan forming in her mind to get the two beings together and to stop fighting each other on it.

Ryoko sighed, "not if it will fix the damage she did by saying that she never loved him."

"Have you considered what Haruna wants?" Washu asked her daughter quietly. "She isn't in love with Tenchi, she's in love with Yosho. Why should she agree to live a life with Tenchi when it would only be a lie?"

"Because she already did!" Ryoko responded passionately, standing up and glaring at her mother. "The second she entered my body and agreed to take it, she agreed to live Tenchi's life with him. I will not let her back out of this deal and use my body to be with Katsuhito. The thought of my body being with him is repulsive!"

Sasami laughed out loud at this indignation. She was overjoyed to see Ryoko, and she was glad to know that the decision to swap bodies hadn't been the plan all along. Her friend was stupid, but she wasn't intentionally a liar, and Sasami couldn't hold her at fault for that!

"So switch bodies back if that's how you feel!" Washu challenged her daughter. At the sight of Haruna's puzzled glance, Washu filled the girl in, "she doesn't want you using her body to be with Katsuhito."

Haruna nodded, she could definitely see how that thought would upset the space pirate. She had to admit though, spending the afternoon with Yosho, no matter how old he had gotten, had reminded her in no uncertain terms how much she loved that man. She always had and she knew that she always would. She hadn't understood Ryoko's decision at first, but now that she had the opportunity to be around the man that she loved again, she realized that she would do anything to make him happy as well, even if it meant sacrificing herself. Bitterly she chuckled as she realized that she had sacrificed her life once before to run away with him across the galaxy.

Immediately following Ryoko's attack on the planet Jurai, Yosho had come to her and asked her to run away with him. He was going to chase down and capture Ryoko, and when that was done he was going to disappear. He wanted her to come with him. He let her know that his parents would never approve of her being his wife until Ayeka was old enough for him to marry first. He hadn't wanted to marry his sister and he hadn't wanted the crown of Jurai, all he wanted was to live a quiet and normal life with Haruna.

Despite her failing health, she had decided to take the dangerous trip across the universe with him in pursuit of the space pirate and the dream of their life together away from Jurai. She'd given up her life in the hope of giving Yosho his dream.

"No!" Ryoko spat. "Tenchi doesn't want a life with me and I won't continue trying to make him feel something he never will. He views me as his best friend and nothing more. She will stay with him and she will make him happy. She owes us that much!"

"Apparently you owe her your life," Washu dryly informed Haruna.

Yellow cat eyes narrowed at this proclamation. "I've given up my life once because of her," Haruna spat. "I owe her nothing!"

"Oh boo hoo," Ryoko growled. "Poor Haruna lost her life traveling across space. I didn't choose for her to make that trip and I didn't have a choice in attacking Jurai! She stole Tenchi from us, she made him love her, and now she's going to follow through with what she started. She doesn't get to play with his emotions and then decide that she doesn't want him anymore!"

Washu opened her mouth to repeat that back, but Sasami interrupted, afraid Washu would lose her tact in the translation. "She doesn't feel she should be blamed for what happened to you since she didn't have a choice in attacking Jurai, but you did have a choice when you decided to steal Tenchi and since you made him love you it's your responsibility to follow through."

Haruna frowned, but didn't say anything. Washu and Katsuhito had informed her earlier of Ryoko's enslavement to Kagato, and her subsequent imprisonment by Yosho. She knew that Ryoko had paid for what she'd done.

The four girls continued to talk long into the night about the life swap that was occurring. It was well after midnight before the three beings retired and left the spirit of Ryoko alone in the living room. With a sigh, she phased herself up to Tenchi's room – the only place she ever wanted to be. She determined that this would be the last time she spent the night in his room. Slowly she lowered herself down onto the bed and wrapped an arm around him, wishing that she could feel him and that he could feel her as well. "I love you," she whispered into his ear.

Still deep asleep, Tenchi smiled as her words and voice penetrated his subconscious.


	6. Simple, but Brilliant

Disclaimer: I still own nothing of any value, up to and including the names and places mentioned in this little story. Sue if you want, but you won't gain anything from it – and I'm not paying the court fees!

* * *

He woke up for the first time in a long time with a smile on his face. It was amazing to him considering the news that he had received the day before that the woman he had only recently discovered he loved didn't love him in return. Part of him was convinced that he must have dreamed that confession of hers, that there was no way that she had said that or that he could feel this good if she had said that. His mind replayed the hours that he had spent next to Haruna's tree, the confessions that he had made and the tears that he shed.

It was crazy to him, but he felt that Ryoko was there with him. Rationally, he knew that she was in his grandfather's shrine sipping tea with her mother and unknowingly breaking his heart. However, he had felt the same calm and, oddly, sanity that he did when she was around. His life with all of the girls was so crazy sometimes, but when he was alone with Ryoko and she wasn't putting on her act of the brazen pirate everything somehow made sense. He'd felt that way at the tree even though he knew that she was in love with someone else and that she wasn't beside him trying to comfort him.

Tenchi continued to lie in bed under his light blue comforter as he thought about Ryoko. How many mornings had he woken up to find her above him or beside him, and in his foolishness chased her away? It seemed so stupid now that he realized how much he loved her, how much time with her he had wasted, all of those precious moments where she wasn't fighting with Ayeka or scheming anything. Every morning that he had woken up to find her with him had warmed his heart. Admittedly, he freaked out on her 99 of the time, but that was just because he wasn't sure of how to react to her being there. He valued his privacy, but now that he thought she might never be there next to him again he realized that he valued her more.

Half hoping that she would be in the room with him, Tenchi opened his eyes.

Green eyes met his gaze as they stared at him from less than two inches above this face. Frightened by this unexpected intrusion, Tenchi screamed.

Washu smiled and stood all the way up to observe the prince sleeping in the bed a little better, her right hand settling on her hip as she watched him scramble to recover himself. "Morning, Tenchi! Sleep well?"

"L-little Washu, what are you doing here?" Tenchi asked, sitting up and putting a hand on his chest to try to steady his heartbeat.

The diminutive genius flashed him a toothy grin before she sat down at the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. "I was just wondering how my favorite guinea pig was doing now that he's thinking that the woman that he loves doesn't feel the same way?"

Tenchi's heart sank as he realized that what he had overheard at the shrine was real. She honestly loved someone else; he had wasted so much time floundering with his emotions that she had moved on in the meantime. He didn't know what to do. Instead of responding, Tenchi looked down at the bed sheet and wished that Washu would go away and leave him with his misery. Every good feeling that he had upon waking up had disappeared with the confirmation that Ryoko was leaving him.

"So you were eavesdropping," Washu murmured. "Too bad you didn't stick around for longer than that little confession of hers or else you would have learned a very important secret that would have cleared up all of the confusion that you're feeling on this. I'm taking it you ran for your life though when you heard that, or else my daughter, Sasami and I wouldn't have had that conversation we did last night."

Curiously, Tenchi raised his head to look at the mother of the woman he loved, still finding it hard to believe that this pre-pubescent girl was 20,000 years old and the mother of Ryoko. "What secret?"

Delighted, Washu smiled sweetly at him and rubbed her hands together while she winked at him. "Well, if you're a really good boy and let me perform a test or two, I'll let you know a little something about Ryoko that will get everything straightened out for you two in a way that's very favorable you both!"

Instinctively, Tenchi pulled a face and began shaking his head, thinking of all the times he had mistakenly submitted to experiments by Washu. There was no way, no matter how much he wanted to be with Ryoko, that he was going to subject himself to that type of treatment!

Washu pouted as cutely as she could, "but Tenchi, I'm promising you a lifetime with the woman you love and I'll I want in return is a few samples, a few little tests that won't hurt…much."

Cringing, Tenchi continued to shake his head as he tried to scoot away from her as subtly as he could. "No way! Besides, if Sasami knows this secret, she'll tell me for free!"

His words forced a frown to erase the pout on Washu's face. She had to admit, the blue-haired princess would tell Tenchi if he asked because she wanted her friends to be happy. "Fine, I'll just get my samples in another way. Have you noticed anything different about Ryoko lately, Tenchi?"

Tenchi scoffed and glared at the woman. How could she ask that? The old Ryoko would NEVER have said she didn't love him, that it had all been a lie since his time in Haruna's world.

"About how long would you say she's been different?" Washu asked, pretending she didn't notice the dirty look that Tenchi cast at her.

Tenchi gave that some thought. How long had it been? "S-she's been different for a few months now, but yesterday was the clincher. She was like a different person yesterday – I mean, she didn't fight with Ayeka at all even though a few opportunities arose, she didn't touch me at all, and then with you and grandpa she said…" Tenchi choked back the words he couldn't utter aloud.

"Ryoko's not fought with Ayeka before and you only saw her for a short time yesterday morning, perhaps she's not different at all and just had an off morning?" Washu suggested, loving to play devil's advocate to the young man.

He shook his head, thinking about her words. They were true, but they weren't the truth. "No, I can't explain it Washu, but she _was _a different person yesterday!"

His emphatic reply caused Washu to laugh, "well, if you already know the answer, why are you moping around wondering the question?"

Tenchi blinked in surprise, not understanding her statement. "What do you mean, Miss Washu? Eh – Little Washu!" he corrected himself as the genius crossed her arms and hardened her expression.

"Well, if you're convinced that Ryoko wasn't Ryoko yesterday, why are you sitting up here thinking about why Ryoko doesn't love you, instead of thinking how you can get Ryoko back in her body and the girl that doesn't love you out of it?" Washu questioned as if it were the most logical thing in the world.

At his blank expression, Washu hung her head and let out a long sigh. She forgot how slow people were sometimes.

"Let's look at this way, shall we?" She tried again as he opened his mouth to question her again. "Two mornings ago, Ryoko disappeared in the direction of the Masaki shrine with the explicit instructions that she not be followed, right?"

Quickly, Tenchi nodded.

"Good! Now yesterday, Ryoko showed back up, but you say that she wasn't Ryoko. Sasami was angry with her. I was angry with her. She wouldn't fight with Ayeka, she barely spoke during breakfast, and even odder she made a confession to Katsuhito and me that she never loved you. Now, my daughter and I quarrel all of the time, but Sasami isn't one to pick fights or to hold grudges, so whatever Ryoko did in that day that she went missing really must have been bad for Sasami to be so distraught over it. By the way, where'd you disappear to yesterday, Tenchi?"

"I-I went to Haruna's tree. Ryoko said that she realized she didn't love me after that whole incident with Haruna. I don't know, it seemed like the place to go," Tenchi explained with a half-hearted shrug, not really wanting to think about what had driven him to that tree for the second time in his life.

Washu nodded, seemingly in thought. "Where's Haruna's tree located again?" Washu asked him as she put on an expression of concentration as if trying to recover a lost memory.

"It's in the forest behind the shrine…" Tenchi's eyes went wide as he remembered the direction that Ryoko had left in two mornings before. When she came back from that location, she was a different person. A quieter person, a more tolerant person who was less apt to blow up at a personal sleight.

"Haruna," he whispered, his eyes narrowing.

"There you go!" Washu applauded him, nodding her head childishly. "If I had a gold star I'd give it to you, you solved the mystery!"

"But…how? Why?" he sputtered, staring at the genius in confusion.

Washu's laughing manner disappeared and she stared gravely at the young man that she hoped would one day make an honest woman of her daughter. "She loves you too much, Tenchi. She left because she was hoping to clear up some of her feelings on the subject. She thought if she got away from you and the rest of the family she'd have a chance to figure out why she loves you so she could come up with a way not to love you. She's pretty much given up on the feelings being reciprocated, Tenchi. After Ayeka gave up, she thought that you would finally realize that you two belong together, but months passed and despite her best efforts nothing changed – you continued to treat her as nothing more than your best friend. Wanting to make things easier on you, she determined that she would find a way not to love you so that you wouldn't constantly have to deal with her attempts to make you love her as well. She wanted to talk with Haruna to find out what it was about her that you loved so much, why you were able to live peacefully with Haruna and love her so freely. Well, the two girls started talking and Ryoko came up with the half-assed idea that you would be happier if she and Haruna switched places, that is if Haruna returned to the house and you, and Ryoko would spend the rest of your life learning not to love you."

Tenchi's mind was in a tailspin trying to come up with a logical response to that explanation, but finding logic failed him as with most matters where Ryoko's impetuous behavior was concerned.

"So Ryoko…"

"Spent the night in your bed from what I'm understanding, but has since returned to Haruna's tree to wait for your life to end so she can resume hers."

"And when she said yesterday…"

"Haruna was, of course, speaking of her love for Yosho, and that after she abducted you and the world crumbled down around her, she realized that she could only ever love Yosho."

"So Sasami…"

"Was warned by Tsunami that Ryoko's form was the same, but the spirit was different. It didn't take the girl long to figure out what had happened, and boy was she upset about it!" Washu laughed, thinking of how Haruna had confessed her discomfort of Sasami's wrath to her.

Tenchi shook his head before he jumped out of bed and began throwing on his clothes.

"Will you get her back for us then, Tenchi?" Washu asked him seriously.

With a frown he nodded his head and looked at the genius. "Yeah, I'll get her back, but I'm going to talk a lot of sense into her because she doesn't make any!"

Washu nodded, "good, then I'll leave you to your own devices. I'm going to get breakfast, I'm famished!"

With that the genius hopped to her feet, put her arms behind her head, and walked out of the room leaving the young man to finish dressing and to figure out what he was going to say to the irrational girl who held his heart.

* * *

Once again, Ayeka Jurai found herself terribly confused by the behavior of those in her family. Unable to sleep until Sasami returned upstairs, Ayeka had immediately demanded an explanation for all of the odd events that were going on in the house hold the last few days. She knew that there was something wrong with Ryoko, but she wanted to know what it was. She needed to know if Ryoko was dying, or if she was considering running away back to space, or if she was considering going out and living on the Earth on her own.

Sasami, who knew that in the morning Tenchi would be told the truth by Washu, relented in telling her older sister what exactly had happened.

After the tale, Ayeka sat in stunned disbelief staring at her lap. She had always thought that Ryoko was the most selfish person she'd ever met, that the idea of self-sacrifice was as foreign to her as she was to the Earth. Here she was though, needlessly and foolishly making the grandest sacrifice Ayeka had ever heard of. She was giving up Tenchi, and she was giving up her body so that Tenchi could be happy. She hadn't known that Ryoko had it in her! Granted it was a stupid mistake that Ayeka could almost wring Ryoko's neck for making, but the gesture was almost…noble!

Hours later, after a restless nights sleep where she reevaluated the entire character of her friend, Ayeka sat alone once more at the dining table waiting for everyone to join her. The first person down to the table had been Haruna, quiet and distant; she sat across from Ayeka and stared down at the table, feeling the princess' accusing eyes upon her. All she wanted at this point was for everything to be worked out so she could go back to waiting for Yosho to join her in eternity. She hadn't had a plan when she left the tree and entered Ryoko's body. All she knew then was that nothing was going to be resolved between Ryoko and Tenchi if she didn't do as Ryoko requested. The girl made it clear that she wasn't going to change her mind, so Haruna had decided to seek help. She was beginning to be very sorry that she had.

No matter how much Sasami had tried to reassure Ayeka that Haruna had agreed to this only to show both Ryoko and Tenchi how foolish they were being, Ayeka could not help but hold on to her distrust of the woman who had stolen Tenchi from them once before. She wanted to believe that Haruna was there as a friend, but the memory of that woman holding on to Tenchi and begging him to forget about her and Ryoko was emblazoned on the future queen's memory. She would never be able to forgive Haruna for those six months of anguish that she put their family through.

"Don't worry, Ayeka," Sasami stated as she exited the kitchen and placed a few items on the table while balancing Ryo-Ohki in her cabbit form upon her head. "Washu has a brilliant plan to bring Ryoko back."

"Of course it's a brilliant plan!" Washu cackled from the living room as she entered the dining area. "It's my plan! It can't be anything except brilliant!"

Ayeka sweat-dropped at this posturing.

"See, there goes my plan in action!" Washu pointed as Tenchi flew down the stairs and out of the house without casting a glance over at any of them.

"Just what was your plan, Miss Washu?" Ayeka asked, ignoring the glare that the pink-haired girl gave her at this incorrect address.

Washu, once she realized that Ayeka wasn't going to correct herself, decided to answer. "Why, I told Tenchi the truth, of course!"

Everyone, even Haruna, sweat-dropped and anime fell at this answer. Picking herself up, her hair slightly frazzled now, Ayeka glared at the woman, "that's your brilliant plan? Telling Tenchi the truth?"

Washu leaned over and patted her on the head like she was a small child, "now, now, Miss Ayeka, a plan doesn't need to be complicated in order to be brilliant, it just needs to work! Is Tenchi not on his way to bring Ryoko back to us and end this madness?" When everyone mumbled their agreement on that, Washu grinned, "see, it's brilliant!"

When Mihoshi and Kiyone came down the stairs, they were greeted with the sight of Sasami and Haruna trying to pull Ayeka away from Washu, the princess' hands firmly fastened around the short girl's neck and tears streaming down Washu's face as Ayeka shook her like a rag doll.

"We've definitely got to find our own place to live," Kiyone commented as she watched the carrying on going on in the dining room.

Slowly, Mihoshi nodded, her eyes wide as the antics continued.

* * *

Instinct told him to run into the woods and to confess his love to Ryoko, to make her understand that she was all that he had ever wanted or needed, and that he couldn't live his life without her. Logic slowed him down. He'd spent most of the previous day in that location lamenting her loss, and he knew now that she had been there. She heard his sadness at hearing that she didn't love him, and she hadn't decided to come back to him, to let him know the truth. More importantly, he'd spent almost the entire day with her, and he hadn't been able to see or feel her in any way that was emotional. When he confessed his love to her, he wanted to look into those golden eyes, and he wanted to feel her body against his.

He couldn't believe that she had been foolish enough to do this to herself. He knew how much she hated to be alone, how much she had hated those seven hundred years of forced isolation. He couldn't imagine how much emotional pain he must have been inflicting upon her every day to make her think that this approach was the logical answer to her problems. It made him want to hit himself every time he thought about how he hurt her and how he drove her away.

Never again.

He promised himself as he ran towards the shrine that he would never again hurt her, never again make her think that she wasn't wanted, and never again would he let her think that another woman could ever mean more to him than her.

His thoughts turned to Ayeka and to the comment that Washu had made. Ayeka had withdrawn from the race. He didn't doubt that his great aunt still loved him, but he was fairly certain that she realized how he felt about Ryoko and she had decided to bow out gracefully for both of their sakes. It made sense to him now that he was seeing the full picture on his relationship with Ryoko. When he was trapped in Haruna's world and everything was fading around him, he had no doubts that Ryoko would come back to him and take him from that place. It hadn't been Ayeka that he thought of, nor had it been Ayeka that he worried about hurting from all of that. Of course, it hadn't been Ayeka that haunted his memories while he was there either. It wasn't her image that he sketched and painted obsessively as flashes of her danced across his mind.

He remembered Ryoko's mournful confession to him that she had tried to give him up for good this time, but she'd been drawn back to him again.

Fear raced through him that this time she really was trying to give up on him for good, she was trying to give him the life she thought that he wanted with the woman she thought that he loved. Increasing his speed, Tenchi dashed up the stairs to the Masaki shrine. Instead of going behind it and up the stairs that would lead to the girl in the tree, he burst into his grandfather's office.

"How do I see her?" He demanded of Katsuhito.

The old man sitting at his desk looked at his grandson over the rim of his glasses and sighed heavily. He'd lost almost a full day of work the day before trying to convince Washu not to eradicate Haruna's spirit from existence entirely, and now he would have to spend the majority of his day teaching Tenchi had to focus his mind and suspend disbelief.

He was never going to get any work done!


	7. Suspension of Belief

Disclaimer: Copyright infringement sucks and is an insult to all writers, therefore, I own nothing in this work. I would love if I could have come up with some of these characters that are so beloved by so many people, but alack and anon, I had nothing to do with it. Maybe someday I'll be good enough to come up with something like this, but unfortunately not yet! )

A/N: Drawing near to the end on this one. It's a little longer than I originally intended as it is. I think one more chapter after this one and I'll be done. Thanks to all who have read it, and especially thanks to those that reviewed it. It means a lot to me that people actually take enough interest to write me some encouragement! I hope you enjoy the last couple of chapters! -D. Dierhart

* * *

The small light of hope was beginning to fade for her. It had been several hours since Washu had kicked Ryoko out of Tenchi's room where she sat watching him sleep so the genius could tell him the truth about Haruna and Ryoko. Although her mind had wrapped around the idea that he was in love with Haruna and that he wouldn't mind the swapping of lots in life, Ryoko hadn't been able to suppress the small flame of hope she felt that Tenchi would be horrified by the idea, that he would dash out of the house to come find her and declare his love for her.

The sun was setting now, casting the sky with brilliant shades of red and orange as the light bounced off the remaining clouds in the sky. A cool breeze passed through her, but she didn't feel it – physically she couldn't feel anything. Mentally and emotionally, however, Ryoko was a mess, her emotions and mind in a state of turmoil. She had such hopes for a life with Tenchi, and now it was all being taken from her in this cruel, self-inflicted manner.

He really didn't care.

Had she a physical body, Ryoko probably would have cried, but without her body, she was just left with a pang inside of her, a constant reminder of the pain that she had forced upon herself by making this decision. She had no one to blame for this, but herself. Ayeka hadn't stolen Tenchi from her, she hadn't done anything to force Tenchi to make a choice. Washu had tried to give Ryoko the space she wanted and not force her into doing anything. Even Haruna was blameless in this as the girl had no interest in going back to Tenchi, Ryoko had approached her about it, forced her to take over her life. No, Haruna couldn't be held accountable for the fact that Tenchi didn't love her.

It was her. It was everything that she had done and everything that she was that Tenchi didn't love. There was no one to blame except herself.

She wanted to cry, she wanted to die.

It had been a long time since she felt this isolated and helpless. The feeling was excruciating. Why hadn't he come?

Even if he didn't love her, even if he wanted to tell her she made the right choice for everyone and that this was the way he preferred things, he still should have come to let her know that he loved her as a friend and that he would always appreciate what she did for him. He wasn't showing up though, he wasn't giving her even that much respect.

So now what? She had vowed that she would stay in the area, that she would live out his lifetime and wait for Haruna to come back for her so they could switch places again. Focusing on her anger to dispel her pain, Ryoko let herself entertain the idea that Haruna would not come back, that Haruna would wait for Tenchi to die and then take off with Ryoko's body to live the life of a free woman. The idea was enough to send Ryoko into a blind rage – had she her body and her powers, she would have blown up half of the forest, and then pummeled Haruna for simply being.

It didn't help though.

Melancholy quickly swept over the former pirate once more. She had known he didn't love her, so why, _why_ had she ever let herself entertain the notion otherwise? She should have stayed away from the house, she should have never spent that night in his room watching him sleep, she should have let Tenchi go on thinking that she didn't love him and let him carry around the pain of rejection.

The voice of insanity known as hope once more began to hint within her mind. It gave her the impression that something had happened and that Washu had never told him. Once more the flame flickered within her, giving her the warm sensation of optimism once more. As long as there was hope then everything would be okay.

Even that quickly died down though when she realized that if something had happened, she would have been notified by someone. Washu was in the room with him that morning, she was there when Ryoko left. There was no way that she hadn't told him the truth. The only explanation that she could come up with was that he didn't care. He didn't love her. He didn't even like her or respect her! Everything about their relationship had been a lie, just like he was lamenting so bitterly and unknowingly to her the day before!

She'd said it once, and she'd no doubt say it again – she could really grow to hate that boy.

Amused, she chuckled and levitated off the branch she was sitting on, knowing that she could never hate Tenchi. For some reason that was completely unfathomable to her, she was drawn to him and she would love him until the day she die. Despite the fact that he was letting her sacrifice her life for his happiness and not even recognizing her for it, she loved him and would happily follow him to the ends of the universe.

Until the day he asked that of her though, she would stay here and wait for him.

He was frustrated.

Tenchi had hoped that the lesson would be a short one, a simple training of the eyes to see that which couldn't be seen without tapping into a part of your spirituality. He'd always been taught that seeing spirits was a spiritual thing, but his grandfather had only smiled grimly at him and informed him that it was more mental than spiritual.

"If it was spiritual, Tenchi," Katsuhito stated gravely as they sat cross-legged on the floor across from each other in the shrine, "you wouldn't have been able to see her as a child. Your spirit has not weakened since you used to play with Ryoko outside of the cave when you were a child. Your mind is what has changed, and it is your mind that needs training."

Tenchi had started at this mention of Ryoko and him having a previous history together. He remembered always being drawn to the cave, always being fascinated by the legend of the demon his grandfather had spun to warn him away, and always yearning to get inside the locked gate to find the answers he sought inside. He didn't remember ever playing with Ryoko though, and no one had ever mentioned this to him before.

"What do you mean by Ryoko and I used to play together when I was a child?" Tenchi asked, his eyebrows furrowed together in immense confusion.

Katsuhito's expression remained impassive despite his surprise that his grandson had no remembrance of the time he spent with the girl so many years before. "When you were younger you used to constantly run away from the house and the shrine to visit with Ryoko. She used to project herself outside of the cave, and you two would spend hours together playing and talking. I had thought that you were finally ready to really meet her the day that I allowed you to release her from the cave. You'd reached an age where you could finally communicate with her in such a way that would help her overcome everything that Kagato had put her through. I was unaware that you didn't remember your time with her though."

His eyes widened, but Tenchi slowly nodded and adjusted to that information. It at least explained why he had felt so drawn to the cave for so long, and it explained to him why Ryoko would love him like she had so quickly and earnestly. She knew him and she had grown to love him as first a child, and then as a friend, and then as someone she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. He smiled as he realized that he felt the same way.

"So, it's mental then?" he asked his grandfather.

Katsuhito nodded shortly and thought of how to teach this lesson to him. "There's a switch within everyone's mind that gets thrown early in their lives. Children are open vessels, they have no concept of limitations, no concept of the impossible. Adults get into children's heads and inform them that not everything is possible, that the things that they think that they're seeing and hearing are really no more than figments of their imagination. As children get older and they hear this more and more, and as they become increasingly accustomed to the idea of 'impossible', the switch gets flipped and they stop believing in the things that they once did."

"Like _Peter Pan_?" Tenchi asked, his voice reflecting his confusion.

Katsuhito tried not to make a face at this reference, but had to admit that it did fit in this situation. "Yes, in order to see things that can't be seen with the naked eye, one has to believe fully in their existence. You know more about this universe than most people your age, Tenchi. While the rest of your friends believe that humanity is the only sentient life form not only on this planet, but also in the universe, you know that humanity is only one of thousands of life forms in this universe that can form cohesive thought. While your friends believe that ghosts don't exist, you've had the pleasure of one's company for six months. While your friends believe that the Earth is making great scientific advancements, you know that the greatest scientific genius in the universe looks at our inventions and discoveries as if they were child's play. You know a lot of things that your friends never will, and if you tried to convince your friends of these things they would laugh at you because they have been trained not to believe in any of it. While you're a lot more open than most of humanity to these concepts, you've still partially blocked off your mind to many things – included in that is being able to see energy that isn't attached to any physical form."

Tenchi nodded his head, trying to understand this concept fully, but not being sure if he did. "So you're saying that since I know ghosts exist, I should be able to see them?"

Katsuhito blinked in surprise, "I don't recall Ryoko passing away. I would have loved to give her a proper service."

Confused, Tenchi slumped down and hung his head, "she's not dead, grandpa."

"Well, if she's not dead, she's not a ghost, she's simply a disembodied spirit and those are two completely different things. She's living energy right now, energy and emotions and thoughts – spirit and memory without the limitations of a physical body – although Ryoko's body was hardly limiting to her. Haruna is a ghost – she's dying energy that needs to have her life force nearby to be sustained. Her tree being rooted to this earth is what keeps Haruna rooted to the world. They are two very separate types of energy, Tenchi."

The boy's frown increased as he tried to struggle his way through the difference between a ghost and a spirit. To him, it was the same thing. The only thing that really separated them was that Ryoko's body was still alive and Haruna was only able to exist because of her tree.

"They are two different things, boy," Katsuhito repeated the sentiment as he sensed Tenchi's confusion on the subject. "If the tree dies, Haruna will go with it whether she's in Ryoko's body or not. Ryoko, however, is not dead, she's not a memory. She's able to come and go anywhere she wants at will. She's not attached to anything or any one."

"If her body dies though…" Tenchi tried to grapple his way through.

"If her body dies then Ryoko will have no where to return to, but she will still be disembodied energy. She doesn't need the body to survive. The tree was connected to Haruna, what you see when you look at her is the trees memory of her."

"Than she's not really in Ryoko's body?"

"The trees projected memory of her is in Ryoko's body, Haruna herself is dead and buried long ago."

Getting impatient as he realized how much time was slipping away from him as they talked about this, Tenchi decided to speed the conversation along. "How does this difference make is so that I can see Ryoko?"

"It doesn't," Katsuhito relented, picking up his tea that was sitting on the floor beside him and taking a sip of it. "You made the mistake of calling Ryoko a ghost and I felt that while we were learning to see energy, we might as well not insult the living by calling them dead."

Tenchi was beginning to feel like he was talking to Mihoshi, and now understood why Kiyone was always crying about having to constantly rely upon the ditzy blonde. "Grandpa, this is important!"

"Patience is important, Tenchi," Katsuhito replied, shrugging his shoulders at the boys impetuous nature. "You will never learn to see energy if you don't learn to focus your mind, and you can't focus your mind until you are calm and patient. Ryoko's not going anywhere by your own admission…"

Tenchi cut him off, "If I don't show up there soon, she'll think that I don't care, she'll think that she means nothing to me…"

"It wouldn't be the first time she felt like you abandoned her. It took her years to recover when you stopped being able to see her, when you stopped going there to speak to her and just started going there because it felt like the right thing to do. She'll be much happier if she knows that you went through the trouble of learning how to see her spirit for when you tell her how you feel about her…don't look at me like that Tenchi, as much as I hoped you would take over my spot as the Prince of Jurai, I think it was clear from the beginning that Ryoko was the one that you would want to be with. She's a part of who you are."

The young boy wanted to be able to deny his grandfather's words, but he couldn't. Ryoko was everything to him, he looked forward to seeing her every day, and he looked forward to experiencing the world with her. He nodded, "alright, what do I need to do?"

"Suspend disbelief," Katsuhito stated simply.

Now Tenchi felt like he was talking to Washu. He didn't understand how those two forgot sometimes that everything was not as simple as they thought it was. _Suspend Disbelief_ was not an instruction, if anything it was a command, and not even a clear one of those!

Katsuhito inwardly laughed at the displeasure on the boys face, knowing how much his grandson hated the non-explanatory explanations he enjoyed giving him.

"How?" Tenchi asked for an explanation.

"That's like asking how to make your heart beat, Tenchi, it's not something that can be taught. Belief is internal and intrinsic, it can't be turned on and off by following a set of instructions, and it's different for every person. Even though you know that energy exists that can't be seen, you still don't believe in your own ability to see it."

Tenchi was haunted by Tsunami's voice encouraging him to believe in his own power. To stop relying upon his sword for his strength and to start trusting in the power that he had within himself. It was clear to him after he remembered that how he was supposed to see energy that couldn't be seen. His eyes were his sword, they were a crutch that he relied upon to look at the world, but if he could learn to see without using his eyes then he could see everything.

"How do I look without using my eyes?" Tenchi asked Katsuhito in earnest.

Katsuhito was almost impressed with his grandson's immediate jump to that conclusion. He was used to having to lead Tenchi by the hand a lot more than that and he realized that his grandson was really turning into a man and was no longer the young boy he had been.

"A good way to start is to close them," Katsuhito answered. "It's very difficult to see beyond your sight if your vision is in your way."

Taking his grandfather's advice, Tenchi closed his eyes and began trying to break the barrier in his mind that told him that there was nothing there but air.

The day had passed quietly and uneventfully at the Masaki household. Everyone was pleased to find that Haruna, despite her unhappiness about being in this situation at all, was a very pleasant and helpful guest – more so than the normal inhabitant of her current body. She had been more than willing to help Ayeka clean up after everyone had finally gotten settled for breakfast, she had helped Kiyone and Mihoshi do the daily washing of the clothes, and when she had some spare time she had helped Sasami cook the meals the family would eat that day.

In truth, she was just trying to keep busy while she waited for Tenchi to return with Ryoko so she could go back to her quiet slumber. After an hour passed, she had kept telling herself that it would be any minute now, that he would burst into the house and demand that she leave the body and let Ryoko return to her rightful place. Part of Haruna was sad about this as she did enjoy the sensation of being alive, no matter how dulled Ryoko's senses were. It was her fate though and she didn't begrudge the girl her right to live. She was flattered that Ryoko thought that she was the answer to Tenchi's happiness, but she was fairly certain that Ryoko had misunderstood the question.

It became apparent though after the sun had set that Ryoko and Tenchi were not to be returning that night. She wanted to ask Washu or Sasami what the hold up was as she had believed both of the missing parties would be anxious to restore the natural balance their family existed in, but she was truthfully still wary of being alone with either of the girls. She knew that Washu wouldn't hurt her because she understood she was trying to help Ryoko out and she knew that Sasami couldn't hurt her, but she was still very uncomfortable of wronging either girls and facing their disapproval.

What if Ryoko didn't believe him though? What if she decided that she didn't want to return to her body, that she liked her freedom of being formless? Haruna was trying hard to convince herself that she did not want to have this body forever. Tenchi had already let her live her dream life once, he gave her six months of a fairy tale and she was eternally grateful to him for that. She had been earnest when she told him to forget her and live his own life. Part of her was feeling very guilty that her decision to pull him through the tree was still having this affect so many months later. She just hoped that it was nothing that she did that made them delay so long in returning to the house.

No one else seemed concerned about their absence. When she mentioned it to Ayeka, the princess had merely laughed derisively and stated, "knowing that woman, she's found a way to corrupt Lord Tenchi even with out her body!"

Haruna could sense the pain in her words though, she could see how much Ayeka still loved Tenchi, and how sad she was that Tenchi had finally made his choice in plain terms and that she was not the one that he wanted. She was handling it with a smile and the pure grace that Haruna had come to expect from Juraian royalty. Yosho had been the same way in the face of disappointment, and she had to respect both of them for being able to handle their emotions so well.

She couldn't help having her concern or expressing it. She found herself getting increasingly agitated as the two didn't return that evening. Were they doing it just to torture her? She doubted it, but it still crossed her mind.

Another more frightening thought crossed her mind though: What if they never returned? She didn't know what would become of herself if she was forced to live in Ryoko's body for eternity. Could she adjust to living in this house with these women? She supposed that she could – she enjoyed their company. She found everything about them highly entertaining – the way that they worked together and the way that they fought with one another. They were a family, they had a connection that she was missing from her own existence. It had been a long time since she felt she had a connection to anything. Yosho used to come visit her after she first passed away, he had been her one connection to the Earth as well as her only real connection to life while she was on Jurai. He had grown though and changed with his time on the planet so foreign to both of them. His visits became less frequent and eventually had ceased.

She'd been alone and isolated for so long, and now she was remembering what it was like to be a part of something other than herself – a home, a family, friends, a purpose! They were all so nice to have, they were all so essential to being alive, and the knowledge that she was going to have to leave was a disappointing reminder of how long she had been left to her own devices.


	8. Days Gone By

The final installment of "To Her Own Devices" is now up and ready for your reading pleasure. Thanks so much to everyone who has read and who has left feedback on this work. I appreciate the reviews and the criticism – I'll never grow as an author if I don't get told what I can improve upon.

Legal Goodness: I own nothing. Not one thing, up to and including the characters and places in this little story. Take'em, they're yours!

The world around her was losing meaning…if it had any to begin with. She wasn't so certain of that anymore. It had been nine days.

Nine days since he found out, and he hadn't come to her. He hadn't come to thank her or say goodbye to her, he hadn't come to try to talk her out of it.

With a deep sigh, Ryoko closed her eyes, refusing to look at the perfect day around her. Perfect sunny, cloudless days were for those with hope, and all hope had effectually been removed from her. No matter how much she had braced herself for the pain of that attack, it still cut her deeply to her core.

At least she now knew that she had done the right thing for Tenchi. She was allowing him to live his life with the woman he loved, and she resolved that she would learn to be happy for them. All that mattered was that Tenchi was happy so she would learn to accept this and learn not to love him as anything other than a friend.

She figured Ayeka would head back for Jurai soon. Tenchi's indecision was the only thing that had kept her here this long…and her desperate need to be someone other than the first princess of Jurai. All good things had to come to an end, and Ayeka had made it clear she was only staying until Tenchi made his decision, one way or another. Ryoko chuckled as she thought of the day Ayeka had told her that.

She and the princess had just finished a knockdown and drag out fight that had almost resulted in the entire destruction of the Masaki residence, which had started with their normal debate of who should get the last rice ball, had escalated into which woman was attractive enough to be with Tenchi, and had ended with Ryoko's energy sword to the princess' throat and Ayeka's guardian logs surrounding the space pirate. It was only Tenchi's good-natured charm that had managed to save their lives and his home, but not before several holes were blown through the walls and ceiling.

When they separated at his request, Ayeka had faced her with her hands balled into fists at her side, her hair frazzled and a look of cold determination in her eyes. "Now you hear me, you demon woman!" she spat out as Ryoko moved into her own comfortable position of her right hip jutted out to the side with her right hand on it, and a confident smirk upon her face. "Lord Tenchi will never belong to someone like you!"

"Someone like me?" Ryoko echoed, feigning as much ignorance as she could to the statement although she had no doubts of what Ayeka's position was on the subject. Ryoko was well enough aware of her own character flaws, and she beat herself up enough about the past to know all of the reason's why Ayeka thought she was unworthy of Tenchi by heart.

With a definitive nod, Ayeka continued her train of thought, "yes, someone like you! An arrogant, lazy murderer that is a waste of perfectly good space. When I think of all the useful _things_ Miss Washu could have created…" She sniffed in disdain and shook her head in sheer disbelief. "You. I'll never understand why she would waste her brainpower making a _beast_ like you. Lord Tenchi will never love you!"

The comment had hurt Ryoko more than she cared to admit and she had half a mind to resume the physical fight that Tenchi had just broken up – slice the arrogant princess' head clean from her shoulders and really give her something to complain about. Were it not for his penetrating stare that never left her face as he stood hesitantly to the side waiting to step in should they decide to try to destroy his home again, Ryoko would have attacked Ayeka and wiped the floor with her, the stability of the house be damned!

She held back for his sake though, and instead simply smiled confidently while standing up straight and stretching her arms up above her head to relax her muscles and signal that she was done with the physical fight. She and Ayeka knew each other's signs well enough by this point to know when a brawl was going to happen or when a simple trade of insults and threats was to be the main attraction. "Well, once your daddy pulls you away from here, little girl, Tenchi will be all mine. You might have gotten Azusa out of here once, but we all know that he was not happy with the arrangement and he'll succeed next time. My father was a science experiment and my mother is living here with me. My family is here. Your daddy's going to get tired of this wayward princess routine and he'll take you out of my hair for good. Until then, it's just a matter of waiting you out."

A frown crossed Ayeka's face and her fists balled up tighter, something Ryoko noticed tend to happen when Ayeka's anger turned to suppressed sorrow. The princess was no longer playing, and Ryoko felt a pang of guilt. She knew if Ayeka felt a tenth of what she did for Tenchi, the knowledge that she would be ripped away from him would kill her. Ayeka didn't cry though. Calling upon all of her strength, she calmed her nerves and looked Ryoko dead in the eye. "My father does not control me any longer, any more than Kagato still controls you. The only way that I'm leaving here is if Lord Tenchi makes his choice. If he chooses me, I will leave to finalize our plans for marriage; and if on the farfetched off chance he were to choose you, then I will leave to resume my duties as the first princess. You can try to wait me out, Ryoko, but I love him more."

For a moment, Ryoko's resolve had wavered, afraid that the girl might really love him more, but she had been able to remind herself of the history that she and Tenchi shared, all of the wonderful memories she had of him growing up, and all of the fun they'd had together since he released her from her own personal hell. There was no way that anyone loved him more than her, and she knew that she could out wait Ayeka any day.

Now though…

Another sigh escaped Ryoko as she let her mind drift from that day back to the present. Tenchi had out waited both of them. Somehow he had stood so still that both girls had wearied of the fight and had come to terms that it was never meant to be. More than that though, he had found the one true love that he wanted all along, all without ever having to do anything! There was something to be said for his methods. She wondered if she had just stopped all of the bickering and game playing, if she had just stood still and let him see her, if he would have noticed her like he did Haruna.

Self-defeating thoughts. She shook her head, hardened her expression, and opened her eyes, determined that she wouldn't think about this anymore. She had loved and she had lost. Yes, it hurt, but she was…in some manner…still alive! The world stood fresh before her. All she had really seen of this planet since she and Yosho had crashed upon it were bits and pieces of Japan, but she had seen on the television that there was more to this planet than Japan. Unlike many planets she had been on in her life, there were divisions of power on this little dirtball. Different races, different beliefs, different foods and cultures…what was holding her to this place now that Tenchi was out of her life? Ryoko was a free spirit, literally and figuratively, with no body and nobody to hold her in one place, nothing and no one to dictate her actions, no home, no family, no life, no commitments she was leaving behind.

In the nine days that she'd been sitting here waiting for Tenchi, no one else had shown up either. She had been certain every day that she would see one of them, her mother, or Sasami, or even Ayeka would have been welcome, someone to show her that she was cared for, but as the days had turned to nights and the nights to days, she soon found that everyone was comfortable with the soul exchange that had taken place. The new Ryoko was much more fitting with their family – she was powerless, sweet-tempered, and helpful, a perfect addition amongst the girls of the Masaki house. Haruna would surpass her there as well.

"Well, to hell with this forest!" she snapped aloud, irritably folding her arms and trying to mask the pain of that new revelation even to herself. "If they don't want me here there's certainly no reason to stay!"

A voice within her told her to give it another day before she vanished on them completely, never to return again. Upon speculation, she decided that waiting one more day wouldn't hurt anything. Brash decisions had gotten her into this fine mess of bodiless existence and she determined that she best think this one out completely lest she somehow find herself in a worse debacle, though she wasn't sure how that was possible.

"One more day," she decided, closing her eyes and resuming the thoughts that haunted her existence.

Nine days!

Ayeka was livid as she paced the space of the living room with her eyes on the ground and her hands nervously wringing themselves. It had been nine days since Tenchi left to retrieve Ryoko, and neither one of them had come back yet! She didn't know what those two could be up to that was taking so long to come back home.

How dare they keep the entire family waiting like this? How dare neither of them come back to let them know that everything was okay and that they were fine? Her anger was masking the deep concern that she was feeling, the uncertainty and the dread that perhaps something had happened to one or both of them. Loathe to admit it, but she _was_ happy that Tenchi loved Ryoko as he did. The demon space pirate needed something good to happen in her life and Ayeka knew that no matter how much it hurt her, Tenchi was good for Ryoko…and Ryoko was good for him too.

She loved them both and their long overdue arrival was beginning to eat away at her nerves.

"Maybe they ran away together and eloped…like Marco and Suzy did on _Stranded Dreams_ when Marco's dad decided that Suzy wasn't well-bred enough to marry his son…oh wouldn't that be so romantic if they decided to run off and get married and leave everything behind…" Mihoshi gushed with stars in her bright blue eyes. The blonde girl sat on the floor with her back to the couch and with a fashion magazine before her.

"Up to and including her body," Kiyone grumbled from where she sat on the couch above Mihoshi, smacking the blonde on the back of the head and causing tears to well up in her eyes. With a pout, Mihoshi rubbed the back of her head and looked up at her green-haired partner. "Ryoko's not going anywhere until she and Haruna switch places again. There's something else that's delaying their return."

Haruna, who was keeping herself busy by cleaning the room that the girls were sitting in while talking so she could stifle the nervous thoughts that were rushing through her mind, sighed heavily. She wished she could have Kiyone's strong belief in logic or even Mihoshi's strong faith in the power of love, but Ryoko had been right. She had watched Tenchi grow up and into a man just as Ryoko had, and in that time she had watched her one time rival as well. She knew that Ryoko was not so limited in her astral form that she had to sit in a tree. Her visit to the house over a week before had shown her that Ryoko could travel distances without losing her hold on the projection. She knew Ryoko well enough that she doubted she would be content to sit still in one place for more than a couple of days let alone a couple of decades. Wanderlust would hit her and she just might disappear on them.

"Kiyone…" Mihoshi hesitantly tried to interrupt the thoughts of the girls in the room.

Ayeka's thoughts mirrored Haruna's. "I think that demon woman would leave this place just to see how far she could project her spirit before it took its toll upon her and caused permanent harm. She's rather masochistic that way."

"Um…Kiyone?" Mihoshi tried again, tugging on Kiyone's pant leg. Kiyone irritably shooed her hand away and focused her attention back on the conversation.

"Every day that she's out of this body is a risk," Haruna agreed quietly. "She knows that, we discussed that there were no guarantees that she could ever reclaim the body when she was ready to. She wants nothing more than Tenchi's happiness; her own health and safety are inconsequential to her. It's admirable, albeit stupid."

"Kiyone!" Mihoshi whined as she jumped to her feet.

"Well, that's Ryoko," Kiyone agreed with a sigh, finishing her thought before deciding to turn her attention to the high-pitched girl who was demanding her attention. "Admirable, but dumb as a stump…"

Upon further inspection of her partner, who had managed to get her charm bracelet that was still attached to her wrist stuck on the back of her pink sweater and who was now flailing about the room trying to set herself free while crying about how she didn't know how these things happened to her, Kiyone was forced to admit a concession as she dropped her head and a bead of sweat appeared on her forehead. "Well, maybe Ryoko's not _that_ dumb…"

Ten days!

Tenchi tore out of the Masaki shrine and ran up the stairs that led to the forest as fast as he could. When he had stopped off to talk to Katsuhito he hadn't thought that learning to see astral forms could take any more than a couple of hours, but ten days had passed! He could only imagine what the time had done to Ryoko. Ten days of knowing that he knew the truth, ten days of hoping someone would come and let her know that she was wanted, and ten days worth of disappointment.

It hadn't been his intention to hurt the girl anymore than his previous crippling indecision had already, but he knew that this large lapse in time would be devastating to her. He only hoped that she hadn't done anything impetuously Ryoko in reaction to his late arrival. He wasn't sure how a disembodied spirit could hurt themselves or others, but he figured if anyone could achieve it, it would be Ryoko.

He'd had a lot of time to think about how to approach this situation. That was one thing that he was grateful for about this long separation between when he found out the truth and when he could react to it. If he had run straight to her, he couldn't guarantee he would have approached the situation correctly. He had been angry with her initially, more so than he realized. It hurt him to think that she didn't realize how important she was to him, how lost he would be without her in his life, that she didn't understand that she meant the world to him. She was the first girl to arrive in his household and he had died trying to save her, even before he really understood her, back when he was still scared of her, he had known enough to realize she was worth his life. How dare she try to give up that life that he fought so hard to give her?

Tenchi had needed this time to come to terms with the anger that he felt, needed time to remember that Ryoko was very emotionally fragile – more than she would ever admit to anyone. She talked big, but he had seen that pain in her, the uncertainty of her own place in his world, the need to belong to something and her inability to really connect with anything around her. He hadn't realized really how painful his lack of vocalizing his emotions had been for her, he hadn't realized that every day she saw her dream of being with the one person she really felt attached to disappearing into oblivion that she felt like everyone would be happier with her out of their lives. He had underestimated how much his time with Haruna, the relationship he had with Haruna, had undermined the little confidence that Ryoko really had. He had assumed that she would bounce back with that arrogant smirk and bravado that amused him endlessly.

Tenchi had come to grips with everything, he had come to terms with the fact that she was centuries older than him yet still emotionally a child, he had come to terms with the fact that he couldn't live without her, and he had come to terms with the fact that he wanted to spend the rest of his life convincing her of that. Nothing else mattered to him.

The camellia tree came into view as he continued his mad sprint from the shrine. The sight of the tree slashed with the power of Yosho's sword had filled Tenchi with so much anger and bitterness a little over a week before, but now…now it was the most wonderful thing that he had ever seen. Or rather, what was in the tree was the most beautiful sight that Tenchi had ever seen.

The figure was faint as light from the mid-morning sun passed through it, but he would know those cyan tresses anywhere. The sight of those beautiful locks caused him to pause in his dash and marvel at his own previous cowardice. How had he ever thought there was a day that could go by where she wasn't the highlight of it?

Her golden eyes turned down to him and he could see the surprise on her face. The surprise and the hurt. Quickly she masked her emotions with a practiced gaze of indifference. He assumed she was trying to convince herself that she was indifferent because as far as she knew, he couldn't see her.

She watched curiously as the boy walked the final distance to the tree and sat down at the trunk like she had when she decided she wanted to speak with Haruna eleven days before. Had it really only been eleven days since she got into this mess? Time was passing so slowly while she was waiting in limbo for her life to resume once more. She determined that the only way she was going to get through this was if she stopped counting the days, stopped paying attention to the hours and minutes that slipped away and denoted how much closer he was to death.

He was much more inexperienced than her at astral projection, and his nervousness and excitement only further slowed his ability to remove his spirit from his physical body. During the long duration, Ryoko didn't move. Curious, she sat in the tree and looked down upon him, but decided to see what he was up to before she attempted to make her presence known to him.

She'd begun to think that he fell asleep under the tree when she saw the slight shimmer of spiritual energy associated with astral projection. Her heart fluttered and her stomach danced in nervousness as she realized what he was up to and what he had learned to do. Hope rose within her, hope that she had worked so hard to suppress over the previous days, that he wanted to be with her. Even while she was considering the possibility of that, the defeatist within her told her that Tenchi was too nice of a guy to say 'good bye' without looking her in the face. He had learned to see her so he could communicate with her and say goodbye forever.

The smile that had lit on her lips and her eyes faded as she heard that voice. Her shoulders slumped, and in a habit of nervousness she moved her thumbnail to her mouth to absently chew on it while she contemplated what she should do or say to him when he did manage to project himself out of his being. Her eyes narrowed. Every instinct in her was telling her to project herself down there and to throw her arms around him as soon as his astral form was beside hers. Another part of her was telling her to wait and hear what he had to say before she reacted at all.

It wasn't her normal style – to sit and wait – but she figured her normal headstrong behavior was what drove him away to begin with and what had her sans body. Perhaps sitting and waiting wasn't that bad of an idea.

He couldn't keep himself calm enough to focus on projecting out of his body. He was mere moments away from seeing her, mere moments away from speaking to her, confessing everything that he had held in his heart and in his head for so long to her! Although he had thought of everything that he wanted to say to her, all of the things that he had held back for so long and the things he hadn't even realized he wanted to say until days before, he had a strong suspicion all of that was going to fly out of his head the second he fell into those golden eyes. She undid him. She always had and he hoped she always would.

Taking in a deep breath he tried to calm and focus himself. He needed to get this right. He knew that once he finished the initial out of body experience, he could sustain the form long enough to hopefully talk some sense into the beauty sitting on the branches above. If nothing else, long enough to let her know how he felt for her, how he always had felt for her, and how he always would feel for her. It occurred to him that he might not be able to convince her to come back, but even if they were meant to be parted he needed to tell her the truth, he needed to know that she knew he loved her.

The familiar tingle began in his forehead, signaling that he was about to step out of himself. He focused on that sensation and tried to wipe all other thoughts from his mind. Tenchi began to focus on moving out of himself, seeing himself standing before his own body.

When he opened his eyes, he was pleased to find that he was indeed standing in front of his body. He stretched his astral body and for a few seconds took in the day around him. He had never seen the forest look like this. It looked the same in that everything was in the same place, but it all seemed clearer and sharper, more colorful and serene. He couldn't imagine a better setting for the conversation he was about to partake in.

Slowly he turned and cast his brown eyes towards the branches, locking them on the intrigued golden ones of the girl in the tree. Tenchi felt his heart race with anticipation at the thought of what he had to do. He knew that all of the words that he had prepared would desert him and he was right.

It surprised him that she hadn't jumped down to throw herself around him, but he sadly reflected that she hadn't been doing that lately and he had really missed it over the previous months. Why hadn't he said something to her? Why hadn't he noticed how upset and depressed she was? When he thought of all the warning signs that she was slipping away from him he wanted to kick himself. He should have stepped out of his comfort zone and reached out to her like she needed him to do.

"No time like the present," he ruefully commented to himself. If she wasn't going to come down to him, then he would have to go up to see her. Focusing on the branch she was on, Tenchi visualized himself next to the girl, and he soon found himself sitting inches away from her. For a moment, he gazed down at his body, wondering if this was all a dream. Deciding it wasn't, he reached out his hand for hers. Though neither of them had the physical forms to feel the gesture, they both sensed it.

She turned her head to look at him for a second, melting from the intensity of his gaze, before she turned her head once more.

He smiled as he realized the power that he had over her too. She might drive him crazy, but the feeling was more than mutual. They were quiet for a few minutes before he chuckled softly. "You sure are stupid sometimes."

A frown covered her features and she jerked her hand away, assuming the purpose of his visit from that comment. "I take it you came to say goodbye. You didn't have to, I would have understood. I'm heading out soon anyway…big world and a lot of time to explore it. It'll be fun."

Tenchi smiled at this familiar song and dance of hers even though the news that she had been planning on leaving sent a jolt of fear through him. He had almost lost her…another hour…another day, would she have still been there? Still, he wasn't surprised to hear her say it, for when she got scared and thought she had no one she always claimed that she'd rather be off exploring. They both knew that there was nothing more she wanted than to settle down and be with him, for her to say anything otherwise was just comical. He nodded, although with her face turned the other direction still, she couldn't see the movement. "Yep, I've come to say goodbye."

She bit her lip and clenched her fists, willing herself not to react to those words. Willing herself to remain strong in the face of this rejection. She'd been so upset that he hadn't come, and now that he had she wanted him to leave and not rip her heart out any further.

"Goodbye to indecision, goodbye to prior girlfriends, and knowing what life with you is like, goodbye to peace and quiet."

Ryoko's eyebrows furrowed and she looked over at him curiously. She wasn't sure what the last of that statement meant. "Haruna won't destroy your peace, she's not the type to."

Tenchi made a gesture of agreement on that, "nope, Haruna's really fitting in well with the girls from what grandpa said. She's cooking, cleaning, and she doesn't fight with anyone. No chance of any disturbances on that front. It's a shame the girls are going to have to say goodbye to her since they like her so much, though I'm sure they'll be happy with her replacement. Life gets boring with so much quiet. I don't think I could stand that much quiet."

"Why is she leaving? You love her Tenchi…I want you to be with her."

He laughed at that comment, shaking his head. "You're a liar, and a bad one at that. She's leaving because she doesn't want to be with me, I don't want to be with her, and her having your body is obstructing me from getting what I want."

"And what is it that you want, Tenchi?" Ryoko asked, that ember of hope beginning to be set ablaze again by the fans of this conversation.

He smiled and shook his head, "not like this. Not formless like this. Come home and reclaim your body, and then we can talk all about it."

It was her turn to shake her head, "no. I can't do it anymore, Tenchi. The fighting, the waiting, the hope and disappoints…and you deserve to be with the girl you love. If I'm out of the picture then everyone's happy. We both know it's not my body you reject, and we both know how happy you were with Haruna. I'm okay with it. Yes, it hurts, but not nearly as much as waiting day by day for you to save me or let me go. This is my choice, Tenchi, and I choose to let _you_ go."

Her words surprised him, "Ryoko…"

"No." She answered firmly and without hesitation, keeping her gaze steady on his all the while dying inside. Still, she couldn't do it to herself anymore. She had heard him say that he wanted everything to return to the way it had been. Come back and talk with him as his friend, come back and pine away from him as he remained diplomatically on the emotional fence. The indecision was what had driven her to explore her own emotions in the first place, and she wouldn't go back to it. She had sought an understanding of herself and what made her love him. She hadn't figured any of that out, but she did know that letting him go was essential.

He sighed as he realized that she wasn't going to be so easily convinced. "so what do I want? I was wondering that myself the day that I overheard Haruna say she never loved me and I thought it was you. In the end, it comes down to that, doesn't it? I've tried so hard to keep everything and everyone neutral, everyone and everything in their neat and orderly spaces so I never had to do anything that would jeopardize the stability of my family. Life's not neat and organized though, emotions and people aren't compartmental. Sometimes you meet a person and at first you think they're all wrong for you, but slowly they invade your thoughts and your dreams. You try to deny it, chalking it up to an overactive imagination, but it's always there whenever you look at them. You wake up from dreams of them and hope to see them…and then one day they're gone and you wonder a thousand times over what you could have done differently to keep them with you."

Ryoko frowned and tried to process his words, reminded so much of how it had been when she fell in love with him, and how it had been when she watched him die, and when she realized he had vanished into the wind. "So what do you want?"

He thought about it, seriously gave the question the thought that it deserved. What was the one thing that he wanted more than anything? "I want you there when I wake up."

Her eyes widened in surprise, genuinely not expecting that answer.

"Come home with me, Ryoko?" he requested sincerely. "Be there next to me when I wake up and give me the strength to start the days?"

"You won't yell at me for being in your room?" she asked quietly.

He chuckled again, "I'll yell at you for _not_ being in my room."

She smiled at him for the first time in what felt like forever. Her mind was still trying to process what he was saying to her. The important message that she received was that when it came down to it, the thing that he really wanted was time with her. "I'd like that, Tenchi, but what about Haruna?"

Tenchi sighed, "Haruna was a wonderful girl that I shared a beautiful dream with. That's all it was, Ryoko. It was a dream, a joint fantasy. The life that we built between us was made in secrecy and lies, and in the end we both realized that the other wasn't what we needed to be happy, they were a substitute. Me for Yosho, and her for you…the life that I want to live with you."

There was only one word that could fall from her lips after he said that, "Tenchi…"

"Not like this," he insisted again. "Come home with me, Ryoko!" It was a demand this time, and left no room for arguments. This time she nodded, not caring if it was a ruse to draw her back into the vicious cycle of fighting and waiting. He had all but told her that he was in love with her, and she could risk her heart again on the chance that he would actually say it. Besides, she could always disappear with her body this time should he decide not to say it. It would be nice, to wander the planet or the universe again with a physical form.

The two spirits slipped out of the tree, and Tenchi drew himself back into his body. Once he was back in which was a lot easier than getting out, he stood and smiled at her. Half the battle was over, and the second half was a lot easier than convincing the stubborn Ryoko to consider that she might have been wrong. In silence, the pair went slowly back to the house, him walking and her floating apprehensively beside him.

When the house came in sight, Tenchi stopped and requested that she wait there for him. Before she had a chance to question him, he sprinted towards the house. With a sigh, she turned her attention towards the sky. Dusk was falling, painting the sky with orange and red hues. Briefly she wondered if Tenchi was still painting, and if he was if he could teach her how to. This world was full of so much beauty, so much painful, wonderful, awkward beauty – she figured she could spend a lifetime trying to capture it right on canvas.

Moments later, Tenchi returned with Haruna in tow. "Haruna, Ryoko's ready to switch places again."

Relief flooded Haruna's features, "it's about time! I was starting to think that I would be stuck here forever! This is the last time that I'm doing you a favor, Ryoko," she stated to the wind, unsure of where Ryoko was when she wasn't in her own spirit form. "Consider us even." She leaned over and kissed Tenchi's cheek. "It was good to see you again, Tenchi. You take care of her."

He nodded, grateful that Haruna had allowed her peace to be disturbed to help work things out between him and Ryoko. He probably never would have sorted his own head out if something hadn't pushed him into it. "Thank you," he whispered.

She smiled, closed her eyes, and focused herself out of the body. There was a pause as the two spirits faced one another, an odd comradeship between them when before there had only been anger and jealousy. "It's the power of the heart, Ryoko," Haruna finally told her. "Don't let your head get in the way again."

The space pirate nodded in agreement, "the heart's a lot harder to break." With that, she moved over to her body and disappeared inside of it.

"Ryoko?" Tenchi asked as the golden orbs once more snapped open and turned to him.

"Tenchi," she responded softly.

He laughed, loving the way his name flowed from her lips. It had always been like an oath she was taking and he had missed it over the last near fortnight. Quickly he grabbed her and pulled her to him, wrapping his arms tightly around her. She was surprised, but not unpleasantly so, and returned the embrace. "I love you, Ryoko," he whispered in her ear. "You and only you."

Tears filled her eyes as she heard that confession. She'd dreamed of hearing it for so long, but had all but given up hope of it ever happening. Tenchi pulled away from the embrace enough that he could wipe the tears from her eyes, and stroke her right cheekbone before bringing his lips to hers.

Deep in their own world, neither one noticed a translucent brunette woman smile sadly at them and fade away to return to her tree, where she would continue to be left to her own devices, waiting for the day she was reunited with the only man she had ever loved.


End file.
